Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | J | Journal of Accountancy

The profession''s roots: reestablishing integrity as CPAs'' primary focus is job no. 1 for the new AICPA chairman.

Article Excerpt
For S. Scott Voynich, a CPA's most important asset is his or her reputation for honesty and fairness. It's not that the new chairman--who assumed his post in October at the Institute's annual meeting--doesn't recognize the value of competence. As managing partner for the last 15 years of Robinson Grimes & Co., a 55 person CPA firm in Columbus, Georgia, that earns half its revenue by providing tax services, he's well aware of the importance of technical proficiency. But Voynich is passionately committed to directing the professions, the regulators' and the public's attention to the professional characteristics that had earned CPA's much of the prestige they always have enjoyed. "Competence can be purchased anywhere," he said while sitting for a recent interview with the JofA, "but without integrity and objectivity', you don't have value."

Armed with that conviction, Voynich sees emphasizing trust in the profession as a fully pragmatic response to the challenges--regulatory, legislative, perceptual and otherwise--now confronting individual CPAs of all types and the profession as a whole.

By doing so, he aims to ensure that the Institute continues to function as a trustworthy and in formed adviser that provides regulators, standard setters, legislators and state boards of accountancy with the "front lines" feedback they need to understand the practical impact of the restrictions and obligations they place on CPAs. And that, he believes, eventually will restore balance to the regulatory environment and forestall rules or laws with unintended negative consequences for the economy public and private companies. investors and clients.

BELIEF IN THE PROFESSION

A recent Gallup showed that CPAs' public image had regained some of the luster it lost during the last two years' corporate accounting scandals....