Abstract
Social scientists who are employed by business schools have long appreciated the ambiguity of accounting rules and the critical role played by accountants in the negotiation of commercial reality. Some portion of the joy of this is the continued surprise experienced by others when these houses of cards collapse suddenly. The articulation of how facts believed to be the epitome of both precision and rigor can be a reflection of self-interest and context is the subject matter of Matthew Gill’s slim but powerful new monograph.
Based on interviews conducted with working accountants in London, Accountants’ Truth is a skillful exercise in the sociology of knowledge. Gill produces insights that are the product of a keen awareness of the larger picture of the need for trust in modern capitalism and the smaller detail of why lower-level accounting workers cannot articulate their decision-making choices. The juxtaposition works because there is not an excess of armchair philosophy about the esoteric of our economy and globalization. One also is not subjected to an excess of quotes from interviewers about their lives and work. In fact, Gill gets so much middle-range interpretation from his interviews that, for most of the book, one forgets that interviews were conducted.
In the space of this review, it is impossible to do justice to the many and subtle points of substance made by the author. But a few suggestions provide a flavor for the balance of the deep pot of eye-opening ideas offered to the reader. Accountants construct a truth that is highly context specific, largely rhetorical, and in a complex interdependence with the technical aspects of the knowledge base. Accountants possess a poorly developed professionalism, in part due to their structural relationship to commerce, and that does not function well to protect them or their knowledge.
For readers who do not share a fascination with the social construction of knowledge, Gill’s treatment of ethics and professionalism are major compensations. Even a casual observer of our financial environment would recognize the importance of these questions to the well-being of our wealth as individuals and society. The “bottom line” is not the usual “why are things in such a mess?” but instead Gill’s analysis leads us to appreciate how such a fragile world has held together for so long. We should ask “Why are things not in more of mess?”
Gill does not oversimplify the areas that he problematizes. If anything, by revealing the complexity of factuality, ethics and professionalism one is left adrift in heightened confusion about these subjects. Although Gill is critical about the modern practice of accountancy, his appreciation for the difficulties and dilemmas of this work makes him quite sympathetic to the people who ply this trade. The absence of a simple fix is a hallmark of this book. I fear that the author will never make much as a consultant!
One of the strengths of this book is how Gill blends the work done by accountants for their corporate clientale with their status as employees of large and powerful accounting firms. This duality allows Gill to avoid glorifying the work, instead tempering it with the recognition that accountants are alienated from their work and disillusioned with the demands of their emotional labor. The latter perspective also allows us an appreciation for the supervisory dyad and the trajectory of accounting careers.
One of the most successful sections of the book details the difficulty that the interviewees had in arriving at the proper accounting treatment for a particular client. Perhaps because of the heightened specificity of this treatment, or perhaps due to the more generous number of transcripted comments, this material comes to life. The treatment should be particularly valuable to those readers who have little appreciation for the reporting contingencies.
The relative brevity of this book places considerable demands upon readers and the assumptions made by the author are many and daunting. To fully appreciate this text, one has to be well-versed in the broad range of social theory, for there are few tutorials available here. At the same time, one needs to have a good working knowledge of commercial practice with emphasis on the work of auditors. Very little is explained on that front, making the book a mystery to the lightly initiated. This effort could easily have run to 500 pages had the author chosen to make the argument in a less dense fashion.
In sum, I find it difficult to be critical of this work. Having thought about these types of accounting topics for many years, I was surprised by the new dimensionality that Gill’s book opened on them. Although my position might be ideal to appreciate what Gill has done, others should be able to find ample, albeit different, value in Accountants’ Truth.