Do You Monitor the Other Seven “Expert” Accounting and Financial Perspectives on Your Firm?

• Published date: 01 March 2016
• Author: Bill Magrogan
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jcaf.22146
• Date: 01 March 2016

83

© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI 10.1002/jcaf.22146

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Do You Monitor the Other Seven

“Expert” Accounting and Financial

Perspectives on Your Firm?

Bill Magrogan

Are you on the stock

exchanges—or do you

intend to be?

Other CEOs, analysts,

CFOs, investors, fund man-

agers, regulators, your own

value-creating managers, your

investment project managers,

criminals (yes, criminals!), and

the competition take different

views of your firm. Do you—

should you? Let’s see what they

might see. Each view has its

perceived risks and benefits, as

shown in Exhibit 1.

Once you have reviewed

Exhibit 1, consider if other

entries “constructed” such

views of your firm and you

did not? You would be at a

competitive disadvantage, it

would seem.

If you find value in one or

more of the seven perspective

views other than the required

financial statements, you might

begin by facilitating the Strate-

gic perspective and understand-

ing the Lean perspective a bit

better. Then, discussing how

you create value now and will

create value in the future might

help you exploit the value of

the other five unique perspec-

tives to stay ahead of the

competition.

No one claims this is easy,

but the right cross- functional

(high-potential) team can

develop and hone these

approaches with some expert

support. Put your people in

charge, not the outside experts.

Some of it will be trial and error

at first, but with persistence

and intelligence, both your

perspective(s) and performance

should improve over time.

FYI: These views require

the graduate skills we teach

in Financial Accounting,

Management Accounting, Taxa-

tion, Audit, and Management

Control Systems—plus a strong

dose of meaningful experiences

and insights within your industry.

It pays to be careful—

and competitive—out there

by improving your views of

yourfirm!