EO Management Advisory Services Department;

              / Management Advisory Services
of the Firm of Haskins & Sells in New York City.
In an internal policy statement of the Firm, it is
pointed out that "since the early days of the profes­sion
the CPA has served as an advisor to his client.
As business became more complex and manage­ment
methods more scientific, an increasing num­ber
of specialized skills were required to serve our
clients in this advisory capacity. It also became
apparent that this aspect of our practice needed
to be organized and administered as an identifi­able
unit "
That same statement describes the primary
objective of MAS to be "to assist clients in main­taining
and improving their economic viability
through improvement in their effectiveness, effi­ciency
and control. Of the various ways in which
this objective may be achieved, MAS has chosen
to provide direct professional counsel and assist­ance
through a staff of qualified consultants
and supervisors."
Management Advisory Services is one of the
departments in the Firm's Client Services Coordi­nation
Group under the leadership of Bill Stewart.
Len Pace is director in charge of MAS, and work­ing
with him in EO is Robert L. Kelly, who assists
in a number of ways, including practice-review
activities. The latter includes the development of
standards of performance with respect to our MAS
practice and the monitoring of compliance with
our practice policies and similar standards.
For Bill Stewart there is no question of the role
'Our emphasis
always has to
be on solving
the client's
problems and
meeting his
needs. This is
the very
reason for
our existence!
In the past decades there has been little change in
the basic relationships, deeply rooted in historical
tradition, between accounting firms and their
clients. The specific functions and techniques of
the auditor, however, have been modified to meet
the changing nature of the American business
community. The growing use of electronic data
processing by industry, paralleled by the account­ing
profession's adoption of EDP as an effective
tool, is one of the more obvious examples.
While America's commitment to the free enter­prise
system remains steadfast, that system has
been affected by the growing complexity of life in
the latter part of the twentieth century and by an
ever-expanding structure of government regula­tion
and control. At least one result of this histor­ical
development, in accounting as in medicine and
the law, has been the growing importance of the
specialist—or, to be more precise, the ability to
offer specialized services.
One of the major specialties that Haskins & Sells
offers is Management Advisory Services, or MAS.
Interestingly, Charles Waldo Haskins and Elijah
Watt Sells first met in 1893 on an MAS-type
engagement for the Joint Commission of the Fifty-
Third Congress, called the Dockery Commission
after its chairman, Missouri Congressman Alex M.
Dockery. Their work on the project, which involved
a broad revision of the accounting system of the
federal government, was the foundation of a close
association that led two years later to the founding