“If the story behind the numbers is true and fully told, then people will change as they hear it – not only at the intellectual level, but down at the level of the heart, because that is where stories affect us. Truly great stories blend head and heart. They produce rational understanding, and emotional acceptance. An accounting number can be a truly great story.”
The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook by Peter Senge, Richard Ross, Bryan Smith, Charlotte Roberts and Art Kleiner
“What is your story?” I asked this “ice breaker question” to the CPAs attending a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) course entitled The Purpose Driven Accountants, A Deeper Look at the Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants. In groups of three, I asked them to answer the following questions:
- Was accountancy your first choice as a career?
- If Yes, why did you choose accountancy?
- If No, what was your first career-choice, and why did you pursue accountancy instead of your original choice?
There were two things that I found very interesting and revealing about this activity.
Firstly, more than 80% of the participants reported that accountancy was not their first choice. Some of the reasons they gave why they pursued a career in accounting were their parents chose it for them or their chances of getting a job immediately after college is much higher than becoming a doctor or lawyer. There are other participants who shared that an event happened or circumstances changed while they were pursuing their first career choice so they shifted to accountancy instead.
Secondly, I gave them 15 minutes to share their stories but at the 15th minute mark, they requested for more time because the others have not shared their stories yet. I gave them another 15 minutes and after the extension lapsed, I told them, “You will earn 8-hour CPD credit for this full-day session. Have you signed the attendance sheet to make sure that you will earn your credits? Now, would you like to do this storytelling all day, earn your 8 CPD units, and just forget the other learning activities we have lined up for the day?” And they resoundingly said “Yes!”. I convinced them that this is an Ethics course so I would not allow myself as their facilitator to conspire with them. We moved on and had a productive session learning about their purpose as CPAs and how they should do their work with integrity, objectivity and professionalism.
What is the accountant’s work and what is it about storytelling that makes the accountant’s work interesting?
The accountant’s work involves storytelling, or telling the truth about the business through the financial statements. When accountants prepare the financial statements, they must reasonably present them in a way that the numbers make sense of what actually happened or how the business performed.
As the epigraph above rightly concluded, “an accounting number can be a truly great story”. But what if the numbers hint a not-so-good story?
“These numbers just don’t make sense” must be running in the mind of Sherron Watkins, a CPA and an executive at Enron as she was reviewing the financial statements. In August 2001, she sent an anonymous memo to Enron's then-CEO, Kenneth Lay, expressing her concerns about the company's accounting practices and potential financial improprieties. She expressed her worries about off-balance-sheet partnerships, conflicts of interest, and the use of accounting loopholes to inflate profits.
She took the courage to personally meet with the CEO, warning him about the impending crisis and urging him to take action. However, her concerns were not adequately addressed, and Enron's financial situation continued to deteriorate. In October 2001, Enron's massive financial irregularities were publicly revealed, leading to its bankruptcy.
Her actions as a whistleblower were instrumental in bringing attention to Enron's fraudulent practices and initiating investigations into the company. She testified before the US Congress and was recognized for her courage in exposing the misconduct at Enron. Her actions really made a difference as it helped shed light on the need for increased corporate transparency and led to reforms in accounting and corporate governance, not only in the US but also in many other countries, including the Philippines.
Sherron Watkins, including many CPAs like us, are working on projects that make sense. We are making sense of the numbers we are seeing. We are finding out the true story behind the numbers. We make adjustments within acceptable accounting framework when necessary to make the numbers right. There are times when we even question or challenge the underlying assumptions and values that produced the numbers. We do this to make a difference and to ensure that we stay faithful to our calling as faithful storytellers and truth-tellers.
We are all working on a project, a work that has been assigned to us with our own giftedness and uniqueness. It is the work we had better be doing to make sense not only of our story but also of the stories of the people we serve, our family members, co-workers, and colleagues in the profession, the regulators we report to and many others. They all became part of our stories that made our work more meaningful.
So I ask, “What is your story?” or more profoundly, “What story are you in? Is it true, is it good, is it beautiful, is it useful?”.
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Angelito M. Gabriel is a CPA by profession and member of the Philippine Institute of CPAs. He is a retired partner of Isla Lipana & Co, a member firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers.