Goal achieved... A Reason for pride;

              A Goal Achieved...
A Reason for Pride
In 1896 Frank Broakerof New York State became the first
certified public accountant in the United States. Since that
time hundreds of thousands of men and women have studied
and worked for years to earn the privilege of taking a rigorous
four-part, three-day, 191/2 hour examination. Their goal and
the reward of those who pass: the right to place the
initials "CPA" after their name.
Certification is official recognition that an accountant has
achieved the levels of competence and proficiency demanded
of those who want to call themselves certified public
accountants. Like the licensed physician and practicing
attorney, the CPA is a professional who must not only take and
pass required college courses but also satisfy a "jury of his
peers" that he is competent to practice his profession.
For the applicant who has satisfied the educational
requirements (in addition to several years of actual work
experience in some states) the CPA test is the final hurdle.
Behind the more obvious mechanics of the test—which covers
accounting practice, accounting theory, business law and
auditing — is the complex structure consisting of national
organization, state professional groups, practicing CPAs
and educational institutions whose efforts are required to
produce semi-annual examinations that reflect the changing
requirements of U.S.—indeed international —business, law
and finance. And overshadowing it all is a rich tradition
and heritage stretching back more than 75 years.
All U.S. CPA exams today are developed and administered by
the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
(AICPA), first incorporated in 1887 as the American
Association of Public Accountants. At the end of its first
year the AAPA, designed to foster more respect in this
country for the profession of accounting and modeled after
the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales,
had a membership of 25 fellows and seven associates.
Today the AICPA has some 90,000 members.
In 1893 the New York Board of Regents granted a charter for
incorporation to the New York School of Accounts, the first
school of accounting in the United States.
Seven pupils enrolled in the first class.
Three years later, in 1896, New York became the first state
in the Union to establish legal requirements for anyone
wanting to call himself a CPA: He had to be a citizen of the
U.S., a resident of New York or doing business in that state,
of good moral character, and he had to possess a university
certificate attesting to the fact that he had the
qualifications to practice as a public accountant.
If the "good moral character" requirement of the 1896
legislation has a quaint ring to it, we might point out that
today some 40 states require CPA candidates to take and pass
supplementary ethics exams before they can be certified.
A CPA found guilty of unethical practices can lose his
certification, as can one convicted of criminal charges.
Charles Waldo Haskins, who with Elijah Watt Sells founded
Haskins & Sells in 1895, took an active interest in passage
of the 1896 Act to Regulate the Profession of Public
Accountancy in New York. Mr. Haskins qualified as a CPA
under the Act and was named first president of the Board of
State Examiners of Public Accountants, which was established
by the Act. Mr. Haskins also played a key role in the
founding in 1900 of the School of Commerce, Accounts and
Finance of New York University and was its first dean.
In 1917 the AAPA changed its name to American Institute of
Accountants and on June 14 and 15 of that year held its first
CPA examinations. One hundred twenty-one candidates sat for
that test, and 93 passed. (More than 30,000 candidates sat
for the November 1972 exams.)
Most state accounting laws were passed between the turn of the
century and the early 1930s. It was not until 1952 that the
last of the states- Pennsylvania-adopted the AICPA
uniform exam for CPAs, and it was only in 1962 that New
Jersey became the final state to utilize the advisory
grading service of the AICPA.
As presently structured the CPA exam is unique: It is a
national examination whose results are generally accepted in
54 jurisdictions, including the 50 states, District of
Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands.
Earlier, individual states had administered their own CPA
tests, a system far more expensive than the present
arrangement. Even more serious were the certification problems
that sometimes arose because of differences in state tests
and requirements for CPAs moving from one state to another.
One of the major advantages of the present system lies in
its making the passing of one standardized test mandatory
for anyone anywhere in the country who wants to be a CPA.
Exactly how does the CPA exam system work? If the AICPA
forms the broad organizational base for the program, the
16-member Board of Examiners is the operational g roup charged
with development, administration and grading of each test.
Members of the Board, about half with primary interests in
the practicing profession and the other half from the
academic world, are selected by the president of the
AICPA and serve a three-year term. Roughly half the Board's
membership is made up of current or former members of state
boards of accountancy. All are CPAs and usually chosen
because of a particular field of expertise, such as taxes,
law, statistics or computers. Because of the important
relationship that must be maintained between the profession
and the college and university system, most of the practicing
accountants on the Board have some association
with the academic world.
The Board of Examiners meets twice a year and works at least
three examinations in advance, a procedure demanded by the
complex logistics involved in giving the same exam to more
than 30,000 people simultaneously in 93 cities across the
United States and in Puerto Rico. (Some 50,000 copies of each
exam are printed and the security that must be maintained
would give nightmares to the head of security at Fort Knox.)
After the tests are taken, all papers-identified only by
serial number to guarantee anonymity of the candidate and
impartiality of the grader-are forwarded to AICPA
headquarters in New York City for grading, which is done by