I think we’ve been duped: you, like me, have probably been told somewhere along the line that ‘accounting is the language of business.’ It’s not.
I think we like to think it is. I think we feel good that we can say that about our chosen profession. But I think we do a disservice to ourselves and our customers by subscribing to this notion.
You might have heard that joke about the helicopter pilot that got lost in the skies above Seattle — it was a foggy day, and visibility was very low. He circled and circled, but couldn’t seem to get his bearings. Then he pulled alongside a window of one of the taller skyscrapers, and had his co-pilot scrawl a question onto a poster board and hold it up to the cockpit window: “Where are we?” The folks inside quickly found some flip chart paper, wrote up their reply, and held it up to the building window: “In a helicopter.” The pilot immediately headed north, took two quick turns, and set the chopper down back at the landing pad. Stunned, the co-pilot finally managed to ask, “What … how…did you know to do that?” “Well, I knew we were at the Microsoft building, and it was a just a matter of making a few turns to get home,” the pilot replied. “But how did you know we were at the Microsoft building?” “I knew because the engineers there gave me an answer that was technically correct, but completely unhelpful.” Read more
