Posts

“Wait! I Was Just Getting Started…”

“If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.” Henry Miller

Lost Your Job? No One Cares!

You may have been cut from one of the audit firms in the past several months. You may still be working but feeling a bit insecure. The cuts have been well documented here. Regardless of how much the firms and their cheerleaders try to diminish the significance of any individual action they’ve taken, they all add […]

Privacy Policy and Terms of Use

The events of last week, including those that occurred in the world around us, have prompted me to formalize my Comments Policy and Privacy Policy/Terms of Use. These policies, to be honest, were always my standard operating procedure, but given the heightened and constant nature of the threats all around us, it’s time to commit them to print. I want you to know what they are, so you can act accordingly both on and off the site.

Hey Big 4! If I Were You, Here’s What I’d Do (Instead…)

I asked myself, “fm, what would you do if one of them asked you to step up and offer solutions?” If anyone asked me to help find a way to get through this period,

-Without reductions in force,
-Without betraying the trust of otherwise very loyal employees,
-Without losing the confidence of key clients,
-Without endangering quality and integrity in the work they’ve been enfranchised to do under the exclusive licensing of various federal governments and public/private bodies such as exchanges,
-Without risking new lawsuits for negligence and complicity on fraud and malfeasance, and
-Without completely abdicating responsibility to their true client – the shareholders and investors in the public companies they audit,

I would start at the top.

When Is a Layoff Not a Layoff?

When it comes in conjunction with the annual review process and the excuse is the process of “forced ranking”. “Forced ranking” is the practice of putting some at the bottom of the performance pile every year, suddenly, even though they’ve often had no warning and even though prior performance ratings were above average in the […]