John Cooney: "It was like coming home";

              It was an interest in problem solving that
brought John J. Cooney to the Executive
Office Research Department in 1971. This
same interest and a recognition that the
Financial Accounting Standards Board
would be grappling with the emerging
questions in financial accounting and
reporting—and seeking their answers —
led John to accept the post of technical
advisor to John W. Queenan shortly after
the latter was named to the FASB early in
1973.
John, who returned to Haskins & Sells
and rejoined the EO Research Depart­ment
earlier this year, was admitted to
partnership in June. "It was like coming
home," he said. "Because of my technical
orientation, the Research Department,
with its broad exposure to varied prob­lems
and questions, provides the type of
work I like best. While my two years with
the FASB and with John Queenan were
fascinating—and invaluable from a pro­fessional
point of view—I missed the
challenging and dynamic environment of
public accounting."
Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, John
attended the University of Notre Dame,
where he received a bachelor's degree in
accounting. He later earned an MBA in
corporate finance and taxation from New
York University.
John's first exposure to Haskins & Sells
was through Larry Walsh, now partner in
charge of the Miami office. Larry, a
partner in our Philadelphia office at that
time, was recruiting for H&LS at Notre
Dame, his alma mater. John completed his
graduate work and then spent two years
with the U.S. Army as a lieutenant in
Europe—during which time he kept in
contact with Larry—before joining our
Philadelphia office in 1964-
Because of his interest in technical
problems, John was loaned to the Execu­tive
Office SEC Department for several
weeks in 1970. During this period he
indicated an interest in joining either the
SEC or Research staff, and the following
year he transferred to the EO Research
Department.
When John Queenan was named to the
FASB in 1973, he asked the Firm to sug­gest
someone to assist him as a technical
advisor. For John Cooney the offer to
work with John Queenan was too good to
resist. "In some respects it was the oppor­tunity
of a lifetime," John observed. "And
I have to admit that the chance to work
with someone like John Queenan played
no small part in my decision."
John Queenan joined Haskins & Sells
in 1927 and retired in 1970 after serving
fourteen years as managing partner. In
1968 he received the AICPA Gold Medal
for Distinguished Service to the profes­sion.
He served as president of the AICPA
and was instrumental in establishing the
National Conference of Lawyers and
CPAs. He also served as a member of the
Price Commission, a federal agency
established in 1971 to create and admin­ister
economic controls designed to min­imize
the rate of inflation in this country.
When he joined the FASB—he was
named vice chairman shortly thereafter—
John Queenan became the only individ­ual
to have also served on both of its
predecessors, the Accounting Principles
Board and the Committee on Accounting
Procedure of the AICPA.
"John Queenan is an extremely per­ceptive
man," John Cooney said. "He has
that important and uncommon ability to
bring people together—even those with
opposing points of view and differing
personalities. And, of course, you
couldn't ask for a stronger technical back­ground.
Just watching him deal with a
problem was an education in itself."
Most of John's time at the FASB was
spent with John Queenan considering the
question of materiality in financial
accounting and reporting, although he
also acted as a technical advisor on other
matters considered by the Board.
The fruits of their work—the FASB
Discussion Memorandum on Criteria for
Determining Materiality—was published
on March 21 of this year and is 246 pages
in length. Because the concept of materi­ality
pervades the entire financial
accounting and reporting process, it
touches on considerations related to the
objectives as well as the fundamental
concepts of the whole accounting and
reporting process. The memorandum's
Foreword notes:
"An understanding of the financial
accounting and reporting process...and
of the ways in which financial statements
are used in economic decision making is a
necessary prerequisite to any considera­tion
of criteria for determining materiality.
Because so little was known with any
certainty about these matters and because
of the limited understanding among pre­parers,
auditors, and users of the views of
one another with respect to the develop­ment,
reporting, and use of financial
information, the Standards Board under­took
[a] research effort to develop a basis
for mutual understanding of these mat­ters
among all concerned with financial
accounting and reporting."
As part of his research on the material­ity
question, John did a considerable
amount of traveling in order to interview
approximately seventy-five people in
various fields. "The interviews," he said,
"some lasting as long as four hours, were
held with three major groups: preparers,
auditors and users of financial statements.
The preparers represented companies of
varying sizes and included some with
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