RESPONSE
by
NORTON MOORE BEDFORD University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana

Recognition by quality people and implicitly by what I believe will become one of the greatest professions in the future world: No honor could be higher.
My appreciation for this award admitting me to the Accounting “Hall of Fame” is particularly high, for I was here some forty years ago when it was started — when Joe Heckert proposed to the Ohio State Accounting faculty, in a small room on the second floor of the faculty club, that a “Hall of Fame” be established for the accounting profession.

And I remember well the debate, as a teaching doctoral student without a voting right, when William H. Paton, George O. May and Robert H. Montgomery were selected as the first to be honored — a professor and the two leading practitioners at the time. I was elated and my spine tingled with pride at this thing Ohio State University had started. Now, as I observe the list of those admitted to this illustrious “Hall,” the wisdom of Joe Heckert’s suggestion and Herman Miller’s implementing actions is reflected in that compelling evidence. You’ll understand, I think, when I tell you my spine has started to tingle again.

But the Accounting Hall of Fame, it seems to me, is more than an honoring process. I see the names of academics and practitioners in government, management, and public accounting on this scroll of membership. This seems highly significant at this time for I believe it is obvious to us all that the profession needs to join academics and practitioners of all kinds closely together into a unified whole. We all belong to the same army but different forces cause us to march to a different drummer. Just as the practitioner must be sensitive to the needs of his client or employer for common sense in developing accounting concepts, standards, and rules, so the academic must be sensitive to the pressures of overall university goals, such as the demand for research, in contributing to the development of those accounting concepts, standards, and rules. And professional failure to be sensitive to the needs of society or to the knowledge development responsibility of a university will weaken the ability of accounting to expand its scope and adjust to the extraordinary capabilities of the information technologies and the exploding demand for relevant and reliable information throughout society. Without a broad perspective spanning both the courageous and innovative developments in accounting practice and the creative research and comprehensive education at universities, segments of the professionally joined multispecialized accounting profession may wither in the galactic storms of change. So I applaud the joining effect the Accounting Hall of Fame has provided in overcoming the ever present tendency for the profession to splinter itself into separate professions.

One never knows quite what to say when receiving an honor as significant as that now bestowed on me. I have told you I am personally greatly pleased and very much support the concept the Hall of Fame is implementing. I think you all sense the depth of my feelings for the honor. I suppose I could now sit down. Yet I feel a need to respond in a more meaningful way to indicate that accounting has the potential of becoming one of the greatest of the professions in the future world of tomorrow. But what should I say?

Possibly, I should say something about the problems of developing that future great profession in the next four or five minutes that I can hang on to this microphone. So let me try that.

First, let me tell you I have been very impressed with the firm steps now being taken toward moving the profession to the year 2000. In my opinion, by that process university researchers and leading accounting firms have made indirectly an enormous contribution to the development of the future accounting profession. They have done it by emphasizing the need for an expansion of the scope of the accounting discipline.

When accounting firms respond to meet the information needs of clients by providing management advisory sources using a multitude of new information technologies and employing nonaccounting educated personnel to provide that service, implicitly they reflect the need for an expanded scope of the accounting function in society. When accounting researchers examine the efficient market hypothesis and assert that investors compound all publicly available information in setting the market price for stock shares, implicitly they reveal the need for accounting to expand its scope if it is to remain the primary supplier of the information that has been used for the last 100 years in the economic development of this nation.

Some may object to these suggestions, and contend that the real problem the accounting profession faces is the task of improving the quality of the existing information accountants develop. This soon leads to a discussion of the need to improve professional ethics and to the need to train young accountants to use the information technologies (computers, telecommunications, and office automation). To both of these proposals, let me accept them as an integral part of the expansion of the scope of the accounting discipline. But I do have reservations when it is suggested that the problems of the profession would disappear if accounting students were merely taught the “fundamentals” of accounting and learned how to analyze and record transactions.

The proposal I am submitting is more than these waypoint goals, for I perceive a new dimension to the future accounting profession — a new scope that will vastly increase the information developed and distributed by an enlarged accounting discipline. The time has come to move the accounting discipline beyond financial information generated by organization operations. Information useful in strategy formulation and implementation and in tactical planning and controls needs to be developed and distributed by accountants in addition to that derived by summarizing, disaggregating, and analyzing the daytoday operating transactions of an organization. There are practical daytoday issues that press for this expansion of the accounting discipline into a much more comprehensive information development and distribution function in society.

The American Accounting Association is generally recognized as the leading body for the development of accounting education. In recent years it has become aware of various specific academic problems, such as the declining enrollment of quality students and the failure of accounting educational programs to develop students adequately for an increasingly complex and growing profession. And it has come face to face with the fact that some professors do not want to change — do not want modernized textbooks, do not want to face the task of reorienting their educational programs, and do not want to develop new teaching methods. I think they are merely scared. They are getting along O.K. now and would perfer to leave the problem to the next generation. But a little thought indicates that solution will not work.

The American Institute of CPAs and the National Association of Accountants are generally recognized as the leading groups in the development of accounting practice. In recent years they have become aware of various practical accounting problems, such as the ethics of various creative accounting practices, the growing influence of organization managements on the accounting standard setting process, and the replacement of accounting personnel with specialists using a multitude of information technologies to develop technological information systems. Peer reviews, codes of ethics, continuing education, and other devices have been used to deal with these problems. But a little investigation indicates that counterpressures exist to such an extent that these solutions are inadequate.

Now even as I reach these conclusions and draw my suggestions for the implementing steps to expand the scope of the accounting discipline, I am aware of a growing negative public opinion of higher education throughout the nation. In calling attention to this development, a panel of educators, foundation officials, political leaders, and journalists described “a growing public perception that higher education is faltering in the delivery of its services to our citizens and its promise for the nation’s betterment.” The panel found a growing polarization of views between oncampus and offcampus constituencies about the performance of higher education and the challenges facing it. The polarization of views is reflected in three issues:

1. Quality of higher education. The public wants to know the return it receives on its investment in education. Professions want better prepared stu
dents than they are getting. To retain its present status as a highly desired function in society, university educational areas and institutions will
have to document more fully the return provided by investments in education.

2. Cost of College. Most people do not understand why the cost of attending a university is increasing. They see teaching loads of faculty decreasing
and tuition costs increasing more rapidly than their incomes. They do not think they have unreasonable expectations. They merely want universities to provide a good education at an affordable cost. Universities avoid these concerns at their peril.

3. Relevance. The general public needs to be told how higher education is providing for the economic and technological development of a global economy. The importance of well prepared scientists — both physical and social — in developing engineers, managers, lawyers, accountants, and doctors for a complex society needs to be communicated more completely to the public.

All of these concerns apply to the task of developing the accounting profession. As the twig is bent in the university accounting educational program, so is the tree inclined in future accounting practice. The university task is not only to prepare the accounting student for current practice but increasing to prepare the student to prepare for future accounting practice. Training programs that prepare students for practice in government accounting, auditing, international accounting, management accounting, and other specialized areas must not be substituted for an enlarged professional accounting education applicable to all areas of accounting. Only in this way will the profession realize its future.

In the light of the opportunities and challenges the profession faces, it is a great pleasure for me to be associated with a group spanning the whole of the accounting profession. I am sincerely honored and very pleased.

THE ACCOUNTING HALL OF FAME
Year Member
1950 George Oliver May*
Robert Hiester Montgomery*
William Andrew Paton
1951 Arthur Lowes Dickinson*
Henry Rand Hatfield*
1952 Elijah Watt Sells*
Victor Hermann Stempf*
1953 Arthur Edward Andersen*
Thomas Coleman Andrews*
Charles Ezra Sprague*
Joseph Edmund Sterrett*
1954 Carman George Blough*
Samuel John Broad*
Thomas Henry Sanders*
Hiram Thompson Scovill*
1955 Percival Flack Brundage*
*Deceased
1956 Ananias Charles Littleton*
1957 Roy Bernard Kester*
Hermann Clinton Miller*
1958 Harry Anson Finney*
Arthur Bevins Foye*
Donald Putnam Perry*
1959 Marquis George Eaton*
1960 Maurice Hubert Stans
1961 Eric Louis Kohler*
1963 Andrew Barr
Lloyd Morey*
1964 Paul Franklin Grady*
Perry Empey Mason*
1965 James Loring Pierce
1968 George Davis Bailey*
John Lansing Carey*
William Welling Werntz*
1974 Robert Martin Trueblood*
1975 Leonard Paul Spacek
1976 John William Queenan
1977 Howard Irwin Ross*
1978 Robert Kuhn Mautz
1979 Maurice Moonitz
1980 Marshall Smith Armstrong
1981 Elmer Boyd Staats
1982 Herbert Elmer Miller
1983 Sidney Davidson
1984 Henry Alexander Benson
1985 Oscar Strand Gellein
1986 Robert Newton Anthony
1987 Philip Leroy Defliese
1988 Norton Moore Bedford
*Deceased