My inaugural blog for MFA has me thinking about transparency in business. After all, what is a corporate blog if not the embodiment of a transparent means of communication with one’s clients, colleagues, and interested stakeholders. Transparency has been, in part, facilitated by technology, and hence the birth of tools such as this blog. My goal each week is to use this tool, like so many of the technological tools before it, to deepen our relationship with MFA’s core constituencies and encourage open dialogues on a varying degree of subjects over time.

Like business in general, change is ever-present in public accounting. We must remain expert on technical financial reporting pronouncements that are continually evolving; we must continually demonstrate our expertise of complex federal, state and international tax laws; and we must have a solid understanding of the economic environment in which we all live and operate our businesses. One need look no further than to recent FASB actions to understand how the theme of transparency continues to pervade business. More and more, FASB projects are actively addressing the questions of fair value accounting, convergence of US accounting standards with international accounting standards, and simplification of the existing bodies of accounting knowledge – all great examples of how transparency in business and reporting continues to pervade every facet of what we do.

Having grown up in the 80s, my first introduction to the use of technology to speed up business was in the form of fax machines and so-called portable computers that probably weighed fifteen pounds without a modem or network access. Many enterprises did not have local area networks, the internet was barely known to most and the World Wide Web had yet to come into existence – I lived online in the limited world of AOL and couldn’t email someone unless they, too, were an AOL member.

Today, we live in a knowledge economy. We expect instant access to knowledge and information. For example, look at how news is currently disseminated. Recently, Apple was hosting its WWDC event in San Francisco. Unless you happened to be one of the 5,200 attendees, we would normally have waited for the press to decide what was news-worthy, write their articles, and publish them, all of which might occur by the following day, month, or never. Today, with live blogging websites and RSS feeders on our desktops, we can get our information as it happens, and oftentimes, unfiltered and subject-specific so that we can decide what we want and don’t want.

Dissemination and sharing of knowledge is coming to us in many forms, and beyond the contributions of technology, transparency in business has also been facilitated by other forces, such as regulatory change. Take the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. As CPAs in public accounting, we have a lot of experience with the Act and its effect on business. Understanding that the Act is not everyone’s idea of a well-thought out piece of legislation, it has caused business to think more about public disclosures and corporate responsibility. It has raised the bar for everyone, even not-for-profit organizations, and with increased transparency comes accountability. Whether you’re a line level employee, a corporate executive or a member on a corporate board of directors, everyone is being held to an ever higher level of accountability, which I postulate is largely the result of our transparent business processes and modes of communications.

I encourage and challenge our readers to think about the ways in which business has improved as a result of change and increased visibility. Although the current economy may offer little comfort, I would argue our economy is among the strongest in the world because of our ability and willingness to share information and broaden our knowledge base. Embrace change and do not fear the sharing of information and knowledge as it will engender success to those that take it to heart.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Accounting, CPA practice, Fair Value, General Business, MFA, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.