THE ACCOUNTANT

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 76, 31 March 1939, Page 18

THE ACCOUNTANT

GROWING RESPONSIBILITY

An editorial article in "Accountancy" (London) indicates the everincreasing responsibilities of the modern accountant.

"Not to achieve the greatest possible accuracy offends against a major canon of accountancy and those practices are forbidden which elevate mere probabilities to the 'status of certainties," it is said. "The accountant seeks always for the maximum precision possible in the circumstances of the case. If he cannot satisfy himself on this score he may not admit defeat but he will certainly be careful to qualify his certificate.

"The accountant's insistence on a proper observance of prescribed standards of accuracy is the most valuable safeguard which the commercial world possesses. We may interpret in that light Lord Stamp's remarks at the dinner of the Incorporated Accountants' London and District Society, when he deemed the accountant 'the chief arbiter of probity in our commercial and financial relations, an umpire or honest broker between interested parties.' But—to paraphrase the cogent observations which Lord Stamp made in the later part of his speech—the function of the accountant is unduly delimited if it is assumed to extend no further than the stamping of commercial records with the hall-mark of accuracy.

"It is unfortunate that the accountant's aversion to probabilities or estimates has marked him, in the view of a considerable section of the public, as backward-looking rather than for-ward-looking; as concerned with what the figures sho-wt of the past rather than what they portend for the future. Lord Stamp takes a different view—and who among accountants would gainsay him? To Lord Stamp the accountant will play an essential, if not an all-important part .in determining the shape of things to come. "On the accountant will devolve, if this view is correct, a large part of the work of directing the development of the economy. And what careful observer can fail to see that the accountant's functions are already being broadened in this way? Examples of this are easy to find. Perusal of Sir Harold Howitt's paper on price fixing, submitted to the International Congress on Accounting, will illustrate what Lord Stamp has in mind when he talks of problems which 'will call upon the accountant to be an economic interpreter.' It is, indeed, necessary to emphasise that the accountant must always retain his major criteria. He will continue to abhor inaccuracies and to eschew probabilities. But the vital fact which emerges from a study of present-day tendenciesis that he will apply these criteria in a more generalised context and will engage himself in a wider field than at any time in the past."