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Title: Unaccountable: How the Accounting Profession Forfeited a Public Trust by Mike Brewster ISBN: 0-471-42362-9 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 28 March, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4.17 (6 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: HBS recommendation
Comment: I saw this fairly obscure book recommended by Harvard Business Review Online. I'm an MBS student and this is a great introduction to the dual nature of auditors: in the business of making money but supposedly beholden ot the public. The author does a great job of showing how the big firms got caught up in the quest for business and forgot about their second duty. Not sure why I haven't seen more of this book; probably not sensationalistic enough.

Rating: 4
Summary: the way of all business
Comment: I found this book very interesting, despite some minor errors. After all, it is a big subject. The book is the best explanation I've yet seen of the transformation of the professions into businesses like any other, and the absolute dichotomy between what the public thinks auditors do and what the auditors actually do. Unfortunately, I think what one takes away from this is: don't buy stocks, you can't know what's going on with them. Although "Unaccountable" makes the accounting profession look bad, absent a complete restructuring fo the financial markets accountants will continue to work to please the management rather than the investors, because that is the only way the accountants can survive. The same is true for lawyers, bankers, and rating agencies.

Rating: 2
Summary: Factual Errors and Unsupported Generalizations
Comment: Unfortunately, this book was not carefully fact-checked. For example, on page 115, Brewster names Hain Hurdman as one of the Big-8 firms in the mid-60s, but omits Arthur Young & Company. On page 293, Brewster identifies Ernst & Young as IBM's auditor. That is certainly untrue in the US (PwC are the auditors), and one cannot discern from the text whether the reference id to E&Y's French affiliate. Throughout the book, Brewster consistently gets Laskawy's name wrong. Early in the book, the author cites Florie Munroe, an internal auditor at Greenwich Hospital and who "rose to senior manager [at PwC], as a reliable source for partners' work habits. Give me a break!

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