Skip to main content

pragmatism vs theory

I've been running into this issue every now and then...the issue of following the guidance word-for-word or being more pragmatic and coming up with some reasonable procedures. I fall under the pragmatism umbrella and really can't find a good way to essentially say that sometimes, it's just not practical to follow the guidance to a T. There is a lot of judgment involved in our work, and one of the principle tenets in accounting, if I'm right, is cost-benefit. Sometimes it's just not worth the hours. Aiming for perfection at the expense of hours and hours of time is just plain ridiculous and unreasonabe. I'm currently dealing with a senior who needs everything to be spotless, perfectly documented, and literally stresses out if he doesn't find what he's looking for in the guidance. Seriously, we're not saving lives here.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

ADP/Payroll

Just realized that the very payroll/adp reports we all enjoyed looking at in order to see how much our client contacts made, now seem to piss me off. Especially when your main contact, who couldn't tell a debit from a credit, makes significantly more than you, and leaves at 5. It's almost guaranteed to get you in a foul mood and yak with your team about the ridiculous salaries that certain employees get when compared to yours.

should you choose to audit financial services?

I'm trying to decide whether to audit financial services companies or non-financial services companies. What would you say are the pros and cons of either industries? Do individuals who choose non-FS have less career mobility within the firm or if they decide not to stay with the B4 after a few years? Really depends on what you'd like to do after (unless you really love auditing). If you want to a controller,etc. at a p/e firm or a hedge fund down the road, you'd want to go into financial services. The pay won't be too bad, especially if you get a share of the insane bonuses they dole out. If you want to audit industries with tangible products and want to get a better understanding of the operations of such businesses, then other industries are the way to go.In terms of mobility outside the firm, auditing other industries is the way to go since you have plenty of options when you exit the audit world. For example, in 2008, after Lehman collapsed, it was incredibly hard

Weekends Big 4 vs Private

Man there is such a big difference between being in Public vs Private when it comes to weekends. In public, you're always on call - and always have to keep checking your email. Okay, maybe you don't need to, but it's implicit that the best performers invariably end up with work on their mind - all it takes is one email from the client to piss you off or take up the rest of your day. In Private, I'm still checking my emails frequently during the weekend, a habit I wasn't able to get rid of. But it's so radio silent since almost everyone else in Private truly takes the weekend off. I almost feel guilty shooting an email, and that's a good sign.