Critical problems of the accounting profession;

              Critical Problems of the Accounting Profession
by E. C. LEONARD Partner, Tulsa Office
Presented before the Annual Meeting of the Kansas Society of Cer­tified
Public Accountants, Hutchinson, Kansas—September 1967
CHARLES DICKENS started his story of A Tale of Two Cities saying: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us...." Apparently, it is a trait of human behavior to describe one's own time only in extravagant terms and to assess one's responsibilities in a comparable fashion. Doubtless, each member of every generation of our still young profession has felt that the problems of his particular time were more critical than any faced by his predecessors. And so it is that many of us today feel we are in a period of stress possibly the most diffi­cult
of all. It is the best of times (our problem is not the expansion of our practice, but rather the control of that expansion); it is the worst of times (recruiting of an adequate staff has never been so difficult); it is the age of wisdom (the public has suddenly become aware of the fact that the "auditors have arrived") ; it is the age of foolishness (many of the arti­cles
in the financial press reflect a complete lack of understanding of what an accounting firm does do, and does not do, in making an audit) ; it is the spring of hope (we are making progress in narrowing the areas of dif­ferences
and inconsistencies in financial reporting) ; it is the winter of despair (A Forbes editorial stated, "It's past time CPAs were called to account for practices that are so loose that they can be used to conceal, rather than reveal, a company's true financial position) ; we have every­thing
before us (it seems inevitable that the accounting function will ex­pand
rapidly and in all directions) ; we have nothing before us (Jack Carey states, in The CPA Plans for the Future, "The average practi­tioner,
making a living with yesterday's knowledge, rarely understands that he may be made obsolete by tomorrow's discoveries"). Our case may be stated in either the most positive or the most negative terms. Our past advances have been spectacular, our successes have been almost too successful, yet we are truly facing problems as critical as any our pro­fession
has ever encountered.
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