Some Reflections on a Professional Education: It Should Have Been More Positive.

This article discusses the major changes that have occurred in the professional education system associated with accounting. A major change in accounting practice during the last 25 years is the number of professional regulations including accounting standards, auditing standards, and ethics proscriptions. Perhaps the biggest change is in the nature of GAAP and the auditor's role vis-a-vis GAAP. Determining general acceptance was a matter of assessing whether typical accountants would agree that the accounting procedure was acceptable. Substance was to dominate over form. Without a rule and specific criteria, each "income expert" decided how far the underlying concepts could be stretched. There was an individual responsibility for assessing "general acceptance." Now more than 130 additional official accounting prescriptions have been issued by private standards setters to define what is "generally accepted." "General acceptance" or agreement by experts has been replaced with rules and criteria for interpreting them. Within very broad limits, the auditor determines whether the criteria have been met, not whether fellow income measurement experts would agree that the substance of a transaction is properly measured.