Strategic Finance, December 1st, 1999
FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING PEOPLE ARE EXPECTED to have ready answers to such urgently posed questions as, "Are we going to make the quarter?" "What were our sales yesterday?" or "How much is it costing us to make that product?" And they are expected to answer such questions in an unambiguous manner with concrete numbers. The phrase, "an ambiguous accountant," seems to be a contradiction in terms.
But generally the right answer to questions like these is, "It depends." It depends on the future, on the assumptions we make, in the interpretation of accounting policies, in the stance taken toward r...
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