ACCOUNTANTS' DUTIES

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22320, 7 February 1938, Page 8

ACCOUNTANTS' DUTIES

* "PROFESSION OF GREAT RESPONSIBILITY" VIEWS OF THE HON. HAUOLD NICOLSOK The Hon. Harold Nicolson, M.P., recently told a meeting of the Leicester Society of Chartered Accountants how he once saved some millions of pounds by taking the advice of a well-quali-fied accountant. "Your profession, if wisely and authoritatively administered," he remarked, "is qualified to take a prominent place in the management of world affairs. Indeed, there appears to be no end to the duties you must be prepared to undertake and the knowledge you need to possess. "Yours is a great responsibility, because you arc not only the guardians of the nation's accounts, you are also the guardians of the nation's eonscience. You arc doctors with your fingers upon the pulse of national integrity. It is your duty and privilege to teach the country that there is a certain difference between punctiliousness and fussiness; between accuracv and rigidity; between precision and mere mechanical routine. You can teach the public that one may be stern without being cruel; firm without being harsh; sympathetic without being sentimental; and humane without in any way suggesting that the faults of human nature are in any way to be compared with its virtues. We are a nation of shopkeepers, therefore our commercial integrity is, in very fact. our national integrity. And the safeguarding of that integrity is your sacred trust. The full extent of that responsibility is this—that I firmly believe that upon the integrity of this nation rests the hope of the world." In reply to Mr Nicolson, Mf Frank Lindsay Fisher (president of the English Institute of Chartered Accountants) said he considered ,that a good accountant must possess clear vision, ability to grasp things, character, judgment, the power of condensing his remarks into a small space without sacrificing clarity, and must know how to distinguish sugar from sand without' spending too much time about it.