“Integrity is the essence of everything successful.”
Richard Buckminster Fuller, American architect
I was speaking to a group of certified public accountants (CPA) about ethics as essentially the art of choosing. I shared about an article entitled, Happiness or Success, Which is More Important? The author argued that it is wiser to choose happiness over success. Why? Because if you anchor your happiness on being successful and you don’t succeed then you are neither happy nor successful. If you choose to be happy and you don’t become successful, at least you are still happy. If you choose well and become successful then you are happy and successful at the same time!
So the answer to the question, “Which is more important, happiness or success?” is not an “either or” but can be “both and”, if you choose well.
You can choose well when you stay true to the promise you made when you became a credentialled professional.
I can still remember the oath I took when I became a CPA.
“As a CPA, I shall comply with the following principles of my profession:
Integrity
Objectivity
Professional competence and due care
Confidentiality
Professional behavior
I impose this obligation upon myself voluntarily without mental reservation or purpose of evasion, so help me God.”
I can safely assume that all professionals promise that they will comply with integrity as one of the principles they subscribe to in the practice of their profession. The dictionary defines integrity as the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles or moral uprightness.
The short epigraph cited above, “Integrity is the essence of everything successful”, corroborates this truth about the importance of integrity in becoming a successful professional.
More recently, I was invited to speak on the theme, Achieving Service Excellence in the Philippine Setting before a group of MBA students in one of the prestigious state universities in the country. I shared with these young MBA students that choosing service over self-interest is the right choice in achieving service excellence. My work experience as a CPA in public practice for more than thirty years allowed me to share actual examples of how I chose service over self-interest in caring for our people and our clients.
Our clients look to us, CPAs, as their trusted business advisors who demonstrate professional behavior in helping them solve their complex business problems. Having integrity or being trustworthy is key to meeting this expectation of CPAs as trusted business advisors and true professionals.
The book, True Professionalism, subtitled The Courage to Care About Your People, Your Clients and Your Career, by David H. Maister, was very instructive to the MBA class when I proposed that CPAs should exhibit true professionalism at all times in serving their clients. Maister argues in this book that all true professionals follow these three fundamental principles:
- They believe in what they do
- They never compromise on their standards
- They genuinely care about their clients
When I say that accountants should choose service over self-interest, what do I mean by service and why choose it over my own self-interest?
I borrowed my definition of service from an American author and educator, Brian S. Hinckley, which goes:
“Service is a virtue that distinguished the great of all times and which they will be remembered by. It places a mark of nobility upon its disciples. It is the dividing line which separates the two great groups of the world – those who help and those who hinder, those who lift and those who lean, those who contribute and those who only consume. How much better it is to give than to receive. Service in any form is comely and beautiful. To give encouragement, to impart sympathy, to show interest, to banish fear, to build self-confidence and awaken hope in the hearts of others, in short – to love them and to show it – is to render the most precious service.”
This kind of virtuous service, the most precious service in Hinckley’s words, should be the choice of all professional accountants.
Why should the accountants choose this kind of service over their self-interest?
The answer to this question can be found in the preface of the Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants in the Philippines. I describes the distinguishing mark of the accountancy profession.
“A distinguishing mark of a profession is acceptance of the responsibility to act in the public interest. A professional accountant’s responsibility is not exclusively to satisfy the needs of an individual client or employee. In acting in the public interest a professional accountant should observe and comply with the ethical requirements of this Code.”
The fundamental principles of the accountancy profession is what the CPA promises to comply with when he took his oath (see the Oath of the CPA cited above).
More than his own self-interest, the CPA must choose to serve his clients in a courageous way to demonstrate that he genuinely cares for them and their success.
Choose service over self-interest, it is the accountant’s choice!
Let me end this discourse by wishing you, readers, success in all your endeavors and all my colleagues in the accountancy profession a successful practice as we all welcome with faith, hope and love, this New Year.