I Made This Bet for You

IMGCAP(1)]Here’s the deal: I made a bet that I can’t afford to lose, but I can’t win it without your help.

So I need you to help me. And by “you,” I mean the entire accounting profession. So call each other up, send out your e-mails, do whatever it is you do to get the grapevine buzzing, because, really, I made this bet for you.

Let me explain. It may be a little painful for you to hear all this, but it’s important to know if you’re going to help me win this bet.

When people ask me what I do, and I say that I’m a journalist, they either sneer at me for being one of the liberal elite lamestream media, or demand to know how I can sleep at night, since I’m clearly a shill for the large corporations that are stifling our freedoms. I’m cool with that, though—we ink-stained wretches have long since squandered the brief glow we acquired from Woodward and Bernstein, and anyway I was being treated like a leper and an outcast long before I stumbled into journalism.

What’s not cool, though, is what happens next, when they ask where I work, and I tell them that it’s a magazine for accountants. I’m sorry to have to say this, but the standard response is something along the lines of, “Aren’t accountants boring?”

(I apologize if this comes as a shock, but people can be very cruel.)

My standard response is to admit that before I took this job, I used to thoughtlessly think the same thing. But then I actually met some accountants. I saw the passion they bring to serving their clients and their communities, the passion they bring to debating new rules and regulations, the passion they bring to deciding the future course of their profession, and the passion they bring to complaining when we get something wrong.

“They’re actually pretty passionate,” I usually say.

Beyond that, they do all kinds of interesting things outside the office: They write mysteries, run marathons and participate in Iron Man competitions, run film festivals and produce movies, travel the world, build more houses for the unfortunate and plant more public gardens than any other profession I can think of, form rock bands and record comedy albums, and generally pack as much excitement into a life as anybody else—and possibly more so.

Anyway, this is a conversation I have a lot. And sometimes I have it over cocktails. And sometimes I make bets I shouldn't make with large numbers of people.

Long story short, I can't afford to lose. My pride (and yours) are on the line.

Fortunately, I have a way to win: Our new Accountant of the Month contest. This is where you come in. If you’re not boring—if you’re even half as exciting as I bet you are—go to our Facebook page, find the contest, and post a picture of you doing something exciting along with a short description of why you prove that accountants and CPAs don’t deserve their boring reputation. Hurry up—this month’s contest will close to submissions by the end of the week.

Remember, I’m basically defending your honor in front of the entire rest of the country. I think the very least you could do is prove me right.

Otherwise, my next column will be me asking to borrow an astonishingly large sum of money. Do you have any idea how hard it is to type with no kneecaps?

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Audit Financial reporting
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