When things don't add up.

• Author: Kinney, David
• Position: Out Back

At least I was honest. Last year, I told students in the Master of Accounting Program at Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School how unlucky they were. Not only were they graduating just as the longest economic expansion in American history was ending, but, to collect their degrees, they had to sit through an address by the most unqualified commencement speaker imaginable.

I knew nothing about commencements, I confessed, having skipped mine on that campus 30 years earlier. Nor, for that matter, did I know much of anything about accounting. My only brush with it academically came during a business-journalism fellowship at Columbia. After the first class, I decided it'd be wiser to audit the course than take it for a grade. After the second session, I was so lost I stopped coming.

So I had to fall back on something I did know a little bit about: reporting. I queried a few prominent figures who had trained and worked as accountants, including Bank of America CFO Jim Hance and former state Treasurer Harlan Boyles, to see what advice they had for the newly minted graduates. Reading over my notes a year later, I realize I had a few observations of my own borne out by events since then.

"You are -- we all are -- standing on a slippery slope," I told them. "And it's your job to keep us from sliding down. As these folks all have noted, you can no longer rely solely on the numbers -- they're just one of many tools needed to evaluate any concern, whether it's a business enterprise or a government body. But don't dare demean the importance of numbers nor underestimate their value. A leader must be a visionary, capable of dreaming big dreams for the endeavor. But those dreams must be grounded to reality, which is exactly what those numbers -- those tough, tenacious tendons your training here has taught you to tie -- do.

"There is a disturbing trend, both in business and...