Accountants ain’t Accountants

Here’s a story about 3 kids who lived next door to each other, went to school together and got identical results in the HSC, attended cooking school together and got identical results, but on completion of their courses were then presented 3 different employment opportunities.

One got a job at the local RSL, in their award winning bistro, flipping burgers, steaks and smashing out chicken parmigiana by the hundreds, on a busy Saturday night.

Another got a job at a local Italian restaurant learning to make a mean pizza and even better authentic pasta sauces.

The last one got a job at a Michelin hat restaurant,  learning to make small, fancy tasty and expensive dishes garnished in air dried, baby Himalayan, wild zucchini flowers.

After 10,000 hours experience, each were experts in their fields.

Then one night, for fun, they decided to do a 3-way role swap.

What do you think happened?

Thankfully it didn’t actually happen. It would have been a disaster.

Another great analogy to explain the difference between accounting specialities is to look at the medical profession. People get that GP’s are generalists. Leg specialists look after legs, eye specialists look after eyes and heart specialists after hearts.

You can draw the same parallels  in the accounting profession and that’s the reason why tax people should do tax, audit people should do audit, insolvency people should do insolvency and leave the expert commercial financial management up to CFO’s.

David Dillon is the President of the Virtual CFO Association.

The Virtual CFO Association is an elite peer network, advocating and promoting the emerging Virtual CFO sector within the accounting profession. Collectively the association currently has over 500 years of industry experience, with highly qualified and experienced specialists spread across more than 20 industry verticals. If you would like any more information regarding the Association of Virtual CFO’s, please visit our website www.vcfoassociation.com.au