The Profession's Roots: Reestablishing Integrity as CPAs' Primary Focus Is Job No. 1 for the New AICPA Chairman

For S. Scott Voynich, a CPA's most important asset is his or her reputation for honesty and fairness. It's not that the new chairman--who assumed his post in October at the Institute's annual meeting--doesn't recognize the value of competence. As managing partner for the last 15 years of Robinson Grimes & Co., a 55 person CPA firm in Columbus, Georgia, that earns half its revenue by providing tax services, he's well aware of the importance of technical proficiency. But Voynich is passionately committed to directing the professions, the regulators' and the public's attention to the professional characteristics that had earned CPA's much of the prestige they always have enjoyed. "Competence can be purchased anywhere," he said while sitting for a recent interview with the JofA, "but without integrity and objectivity', you don't have value. " Armed with that conviction, Voynich sees emphasizing trust in the profession as a fully pragmatic response to the challenges--regulatory, legislative, perceptual and otherwise--now confronting individual CPAs of all types and the profession as a whole. By doing so, he aims to ensure that the Institute continues to function as a trustworthy and in formed adviser that provides regulators, standard setters, legislators and state boards of accountancy with the "front lines" feedback they need to understand the practical impact of the restrictions and obligations they place on CPAs. And that, he believes, eventually will restore balance to the regulatory environment and forestall rules or laws with unintended negative consequences for the economy public and private companies. investors and clients. BELIEF IN THE PROFESSION A recent Gallup showed that CPAs' public image had regained some of the luster it lost during the last two years' corporate accounting scandals. And while pessimists may wonder whether practitioners will ever again achieve the degree of public trust they once enjoyed, others see the profession's current travails as a short-lived aberration. Voynich places himself squarely in the latter camp. "The profession's image problem in part was caused by CPAs who failed to follow the rules, not by a lack of regulatory oversight," he said. "Consequently, we have to take action against those practitioners who violate the code of ethics. And we all should remain mindful of our core values of integrity, competence and objectivity and live by them on a daily basis. " Being faithful to those values requires devotion to the profession--something Voynich first felt when he became a junior accountant. In February 1975, as a college senior majoring in accounting at the University of Georgia, Voynich drove three hours from his home in Athens to Columbus where, he had heard, an accounting position was available. It was a Saturday, but that didn't deter Voynich from making the trip and knocking on the door of the firm's seemingly closed offices. Eventually someone answered. A partner of the firm, though busy in the midst of tax season, took the time to discuss career prospects and ended up offering him a job after graduation. Thrilled, Voynich was on iris way to becoming a CPA. When he started at that firm, where he still works today, another factor sparked Voynich's enthusiasm for the profession in a way he hadn't anticipated. "Until I began work, I didn't fully appreciate how honorable our profession is. For instance, if non-clients called, wanting to change CPA firms, we tried to identify and resolve the problems they had with their existing CPAs; that's how collegial the profession was. And there never was a doubt--you did the ethical thing, even if it was costly. " Refocusing on the present, Voynich was optimistic. "We haven't abandoned those beliefs," he said. "We just need to remind ourselves of them. " He realizes the profession's scope of services and its business opportunities have expanded but is confident its values have remained constant. …