What Should An Accountant Be Asked?

"Never ask an accountant to spend any money.
They can’t answer a creative question.”

That is the experience, as reported in London's The Times 25 October 23 'dairy', of 80s pop music impresario (and train enthusiast), Pete Waterman.

His disparaging remarks were in context of the UK government cutting and running from expansion of Europe's largest transport project. A new high-speed rail line which now will only run around 100 miles, from West London to Birmingham.

Regardless of standing on this 'HS2' or any such infrastructure build, his comments do shine light on what exactly the role our esteemed counters of beans ought have when it comes to the proposals we submit.

I have myself suffered at their outrageous overreach.

To give one but common example, they work for a firm extolling 'best value' as a core principle, yet will only ever sign-off the cheapest quote. Often compounded by the double-standard of themselves selling at a price 'higher' than rivals, insisting they unleash greater rewards, much bigger bang-for-buck and way less worry.

The very fact that in my current area of specialism, so many of them mistakenly seem to insist on using 'free' Microsoft Teams for video meetings reveals how the breed think.

Yet when faced with their oversight, we can and should use this trait to our advantage. One that brings the benefits of those colleagues of theirs for whom we are the welcome problem solvers to the fore.

What are our figures of distinction?

(Decimal) point of difference?

Our perfect or prime number?

Where links elsewhere might be contingent, inflated, unlikely?

Which of our projected amounts are best to interrogate? And are we encouraging their investigation?

Let them show their creative accounting skills, to make proving returns less taxing.