Peer Review Pressure

Last night, at one of the area's nicest restaurants, Jim Jensen and his firm had hosted a dinner for Carla Fielding, the accounting department chair at the local state university, and many of her faculty members. Jim was the managing partner of Flanigan & Smith, one of the city's largest accounting firms. The firm had long been a strong supporter and advocate of the accounting department. In his after-dinner presentation, after expressing some heartfelt praise for the department and its graduates, Jim went on to air an issue that had been troubling him. He expressed concern that the firm's senior accountants seemed incapable, or at least unwilling, to critique in a meaningful way the team members they supervised in the firm. These senior accountants just would not say anything critical of their staff; it seemed to him that peer pressure not to judge others was impairing the firm's peer review process. This lack of critical review had become a growing problem for the firm over the past few years as fairly recent hires moved into senior positions. As the discussion unfolded, Jim left little doubt that, in his opinion, there was a need for the university to improve the peer review and evaluation skills of its graduates as part of its curriculum. The next day, Carla and some of her faculty members discussed the issue Jim had raised. Though brief, the lively discussion ranged widely. One end of the range included a possible value-added perspective. If higher quality peer review training could be added to the curriculum, it might be an opportunity to differentiate the department's graduates from its competitors. At the other end of the range was the opinion that perhaps such training was not directly part of an accounting education and really wasn't the department's responsibility. Although large corporations often possessed the critical mass necessary to provide in-house training programs to grow employees' skill sets, most accounting firms did not--they were just too small. The issue was a sticky one; did the problem really demand the department's attention or was it something that could just be ignored? And what might be the consequences of either course of action? Wading into the Issue Carla continued to think about Jim's request. What, if anything, needed to be done in response? It wasn't as if the criticism were provided by an insignificant supporter. This was one of the largest firms in the area, which supported the department both by hiring its graduates and by sponsoring a faculty lectureship. She knew that the partner's concern was real and that there was little danger of losing his support. But she also knew the firm recruited elsewhere and the importance of securing external financial support was growing as the state's budgetary problems continued to reduce funding for higher education. Carla wanted the department to be proactive and sensitive to the needs of those who hired its graduates, but where did the department's responsibility end and that of employers begin? The accounting major already had a demanding curriculum with more credit hours than any other business major. Course offerings were impacted through topic coverage needed to pass the professional CPA Exam. In addition, new accounting, auditing, and legal (tax laws) standards were routinely being promulgated, applying increasing pressure to squeeze even more content into a relatively fixed number of course offerings. Given this situation, was the imposition of increased coverage of a non-content item like peer review training into the department curriculum even reasonable to consider? What role should the department assume with respect to peer review skill development? Did the department's responsibility extend beyond helping its graduates obtain entry level professional positions, or was increased training in peer review something for which the profession itself should assume the major responsibility? …