Diversity in accounting: It could be worse!

Accounting firms pay a lot of lip service to diversity. The Big 4, especially, like to point out the number of women and minorities they hire, and the statistics do bear it out. However, at the partnership level, the profile is still largely white and male. Still, accounting firms can claim, “Hey, at least we’re not tech companies!“:

Sexual harassment, bullying and racist stereotyping are common in the technology industry, creating a culture that drives underrepresented employees out of their jobs, new research has found. One in 10 women in tech experience unwanted sexual attention, and nearly one in four people of color face stereotyping, according to the Kapor Center for Social Impact and Harris Poll, which surveyed more than 2,000 people who left tech jobs in the last three years. The findings – which suggest that sexual harassment and complaints about unfairness are disproportionately high in the tech sector compared to other industries – come at a time of heightened debates around diversity and discrimination in Silicon Valley.

Accounting has the benefit of not being as heavily scrutinized as the tech world. But it’s hard to say if a survey on the accounting profession would yield different results.

SEC enforcement

Perhaps there are exceptions, but in general, you never want someone writing this about you in an email:

I believe that is being done to avoid Corporate policy and try to “hide” this from the auditors. I could be mistaken, but this doesn’t pass the smell test.

That’s from a SEC enforcement order for David Pruitt, the former VP of Finance for the Army Sustainment Division of L3 Technologies Inc. He’s been accused of “creating invoices that were not actually delivered at the same time that the revenue was recorded.” The additional revenue of $17.9 million that was recognized “allegedly” allowed the Army Sustainment Division to hit an internal target that generated bonuses to the employees.

Previously, on Going Concern…

Marsha Leest wrote about listening. Megan Lewczyk wrote about a smart people shortage. In Open Items, someone’s asking about credits earned abroad for the 150 credit hour requirement.

In other news:

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