Before you leave here to resume that crude
approximation of a human life you have heretofore
called a life, I will undertake to inform
you of certain truths.
I will then offer an opinion as to how you
might most profitably view and respond to
those truths.’
‘You will return to your homes and families
for the holiday vacation and, in that festive
interval before the last push of CPA examination
study — trust me — you will hesitate,
you will feel dread and doubt.
This will be natural.
You will, for what seems the first time, feel
dread at your hometown chums’ sallies about
accountancy as the career before you, you
will read the approval in your parents’
smiles as an approval of your surrender — oh,
I have been there, gentlemen; I know every
cobble in the road you are walking.
For the hour approaches.
To begin, in that literally dreadful interval
of looking down before the leap outward, to
hear dolorous forecasts as to the sheer drudgery
of the profession you are choosing, the lack
of excitement or chance to shine on the athletic
fields or ballroom floors of life heretofore.’
‘To experience commitment as the loss of
options, a type of death, the death of childhood’s
limitless possibility, of the flattery of
choice without duress — this will happen,
mark me.
Childhood’s end.
The first of many deaths.
Hesitation is natural.
Doubt is natural.’
‘You might wish to recall, then, in three
weeks’ time, should you be so disposed,
this room, this moment, and the information
I shall now relay to you.’
‘I wish to inform you that the accounting
profession to which you aspire is, in fact,
heroic.
Please note that I have said “inform”
and not “opine” or “allege” or “posit.”
The truth is that what you soon go home to
your carols and toddies and books and CPA
examination preparation guides to stand on
the cusp of is — heroism.’
‘Exacting?
Prosaic?
Banausic to the point of drudgery?
Sometimes.
Often tedious?
Perhaps.
But brave?
Worthy?
Fitting, sweet?
Romantic?
Chivalric?
Heroic?’
‘Gentlemen — by which I mean, of course,
latter adolescents who aspire to manhood — gentlemen,
here is a truth: Enduring tedium over real
time in a confined space is what real courage
is.
Such endurance is, as it happens, the distillate
of what is, today, in this world neither I
nor you have made, heroism.
Heroism.’
‘By which, I mean true heroism, not heroism
as you might know it from films or the tales
of childhood.
You are now nearly at childhood’s end; you
are ready for the truth’s weight, to bear
it.
The truth is that the heroism of your childhood
entertainments was not true valor.
It was theater.
The grand gesture, the moment of choice, the
mortal danger, the external foe, the climactic
battle whose outcome resolves all — all
designed to appear heroic, to excite and gratify
an audience.
An audience.’
‘Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality
— there is no audience.
No one to applaud, to admire.
No one to see you.
Do you understand?
Here is the truth — actual heroism receives
no ovation, entertains no one.
No one queues up to see it.
No one is interested.’
‘True heroism is you, alone, in a designated
work space.
True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year
upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious
exercise of probity and care — with no one
there to see or cheer.
This is the world.
Just you and the job, at your desk.
You and the return, you and the cash-flow
data, you and the inventory protocol, you
and the depreciation schedules, you and the
numbers.’
‘True heroism is a priori incompatible with
audience or applause or even the bare notice
of the common run of man.
In fact, the less conventionally heroic or
exciting or adverting or even interesting
or engaging a labor appears to be, the greater
its potential as an arena for actual heroism,
and therefore as a denomination of joy unequaled
by any you men can yet imagine.’
‘To retain care and scrupulosity about each
detail from within the teeming wormball of
data and rule and exception and contingency
which constitutes real-world accounting — this
is heroism.
To attend fully to the interests of the client
and to balance those interests against the
high ethical standards of FASB and extant
law — yea, to serve those who care not for
service but only for results — this is heroism.
This may be the first time you’ve heard
the truth put plainly, starkly.
Effacement.
Sacrifice.
Service.
To give oneself to the care of others’ money
— this is effacement, perdurance, sacrifice,
honor, doughtiness, valor.
Hear this or not, as you will.
Learn it now, or later — the world has time.
Routine, repetition, tedium, monotony, ephemeracy,
inconsequence, abstraction, disorder, boredom,
angst, ennui — these are the true hero’s
enemies, and make no mistake, they are fearsome
indeed.
For they are real.’
‘Too much, you say?
Cowboy, paladin, hero?
Gentlemen, read your history.
Yesterday’s hero pushed back at bounds and
frontiers — he penetrated, tamed, hewed,
shaped, made, brought things into being.
Yesterday’s society’s heroes generated
facts.
For this is what society is — an agglomeration
of facts.’
‘But it is now today’s era, the modern
era.
In today’s world, boundaries are fixed,
and most significant facts have been generated.
Gentlemen, the heroic frontier now lies in
the ordering and deployment of those facts.
Classification, organization, presentation.
To put it another way, the pie has been made
— the contest is now in the slicing.
Gentlemen, you aspire to hold the knife.
Wield it.
To admeasure.
To shape each given slice, the knife’s angle
and depth of cut.’
‘A baker wears a hat, but it is not our
hat.
Gentlemen, prepare to wear the hat.
You have wondered, perhaps, why all real accountants
wear hats?
They are today’s cowboys.
As will you be.
Riding the American range.
Riding herd on the unending torrent of financial
data.
The eddies, cataracts, arranged variations,
fractious minutiae.
You order the data, shepherd it, direct its
flow, lead it where it’s needed, in the
codified form in which it’s apposite.
You deal in facts, gentlemen, for which there
has been a market since man first crept from
the primeval slurry.
It is you — tell them that.
Who ride, man the walls, define the pie, serve.’
‘Gentlemen, you are called to account.’
