Accountancy Qualifications

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 101, 23 January 1935, Page 11

Accountancy Qualifications

Sir, —I was very pleased to see the letter from “Sympathetic But Firm” making a brave attempt to take up the cudgels on behalf of the New Zealand Society of Accountants. The fact that a letter has arrived from the other side, stating their case —more or less half-heartedly, it is true —will givo the public at large the opportuning of judging matters for themselves. I have to thank “Sympathetic But Firm” for allowing the shadow of an answer to a portion of one of the questions asked in my previous letter to creep into his correspondence. ■So it is admitted that the society has members who owe their professional privileges to back-door methods! We arc also publicly told that the accountants in practice who have passed are bitter on this score. Do not these accountants hold the remedy in their own hands? Is the society to be allowed to put the whole thing off by just merely saying,,“We are sorry, but we won't do it again?” What would be said of the British Medical Association or the New Zealand Law Society if they allowed members in by the back door? Why should not every public accountant who has passed his examinations have the words “by examination on his name-plate? Big concerns like the dairy company in Whakatane and the Public Service Commissioner’s office can afford to advertise for accountants qualified by examination, but what remedy is open to the man in the street who cannot afford to advertise when he wants the services of the “passed” accountant? . The public at large is no-t so much interested in the doings at the examinations, of one or two particular geniuses as they are in the doings of the theoretical “passed” member and the “back-door member, from whom they crave protection. The society seems to be trying to corner the market in its own line of business, and if this cannot be called monopoly, then I don’t know what other name to give it. The society may be out to secure for itself the monopoly of affixing signatures -to limited company bal-ance-sheets and accounts, but caunot hope to secure the monopoly of all the brains and common sense of the gifted men in the country. As regards all tho kicks and very little thanks meted out io the body of men xvho administer the affairs of the society, nobody would be at all likely to get so many kicks unless’t was thought he deserved at least some of them: there is no smoke xvithout fire.

No, call a spade a spade and have done . with cant and camouflage. Let the New Zealand Society of Accountants put its own house in order before starting to talk of educating the man in the street.or anyone else. The man in the street, is not a fool: give him credit for having some brains, even if he is not a member of the society, He can see through a smoke screen as well as the next man, and he wants to know why some men have been let in by the back door, aud. on the other hand,-why others should be condemned to sit for examinations which leave them, at the end of three hour.-? on the point, ot being carried out of the examination room on a stretcher —according to one o" the society's own members Here’s a chance to educate the public at large.—l am. etc., „ FLOGGED. Wanganui, January 21.