Public Accounting: Which Kind of Professionalism?

Abstract This article focuses on the kind of professionalism that should be practiced by public accountants. Recent changes in public accounting are disturbing. Even some of its practitioners refer to what one thinks of as a profession as an industry. The attitude of those in practice seems to have changed somehow, to be less concerned with the status of the profession and more concerned with its profitability. To achieve growth at a time when industry is not expanding as rapidly as desired, strenuous competitive activities have become accepted as normal practice. The public accounting firms one once knew appear to be experiencing a metamorphosis into organizations with a wide variety of capabilities offered to any client for any purpose as long as the desired service is both legal and profitable. Because society has granted to the CPI professions exclusive rights to practice, it expects something in return. Specifically, society expects CPI-professional practitioners to act in the best interests of society in resolving the issues that arise unavoidably within the scope of the franchised practice. In effect, society grants to the CPI-professional some of its own rule-making and enforcement powers.