For thousands of years, those who controlled and monitored society’s finances–accountants–were often the most powerful, respected, and influential members of the community. From the collectors at communal granaries in the ancient Middle East to the scribes who monitored Queen Victoria’s Exchequer, the accountant’s role has been to preserve the integrity of financial systems. (Brewester)
Careers in accounting:
Accounting-along with such fields as architecture, engineering. Law, medicine is recognized as a profession. What distinguishes a profession from other disciplines? There is no widely recognized definition of a profession, but all of these fields have several characteristics in common.
First, all professions involve a complex and evolving body of knowledge. In accounting, the complexity and the ever-changing nature of the business world, financial reporting requirements, management demands for increasingly complex information, and income tax laws certainly meet this criterion.
In all professions, practitioners must use their professional judgment to resolve many problems and dilemmas. Throughout this text, we will point out situations requiring accountants to exercise professional judgment.
Of greatest importance, however, is the unique responsibility of professionals to serve the public’s best interest, even at the sacrifice of personal advantage. This responsibility stems from the fact that the public has little technical knowledge in the professions, yet fait and competent performance by professionals is vital to the public’s health, safety, or well-being. The practice of medicine, for example, directly affects public health, while engineering affects public safety. Accounting affects the public’s well being in many ways, because accounting information is used in the allocation of economic resources throughout society. Thus accountants have a basic social contract to avoid being associated with misleading information.
Accountants tend to specialize in specific fields, as do the members of other professions. In terms of career opportunities, accounting may be divided into four broad......
