Rick Telberg's Insider: Professional Values Mean Professional Value
June 12, 2000 (SmartPros) — At perhaps no other time in the century-long history of the accounting profession have the opportunities for success been so broad and deep. It's a great time to be an accountant.
It's also a great time to begin a new phase in a career of serving accountants and business professionals. Hello, in case we haven't met, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Rick Telberg, senior editorial director of SmartPros Accounting. First as a writer and editor at Accounting Today, and later as a vice president and publisher at Thomson Corp.'s Faulkner & Gray, I've followed SmartPros' growth and progress, its expanding vision, and its staunch commitment to the needs and aspirations of the serious professional.
SmartPros traces it's beginnings to three high school friends who saw opportunities on the Internet in 1994, long before the Internet was a household word. They gave birth to AccountingNet, now SmartPros, and soon to be fully re-launched with a new look and vastly broader offerings for a multitude of business professionals. We'll be relying on you, the working professional, to continue to guide us in our development.
Accountants are a special breed of professional. Their role in the marketplace is uniquely privileged and, well, accountable. No other professional works more passionately or diligently to help their client. And yet, the truly professional accountant remains independently objective and carries the burden of answering to a higher authority -- the public. Accountants hold a special regard for truth, fairness and accuracy.
But the opportunities for an accountant today are just as formidable. The accounting, auditing and bookkeeping industry this year will top $72 billion in revenue, an 11 percent increase from last year, according to the U.S. Commerce Dept., which projects similar double-digit percentage gains for the next five years. More than 700,000 people work in the business.
Counting members in corporate, government and academia, the tax and accounting profession is more than 1 million strong. These are the professionals we at SmartPros Accounting dedicate ourselves to serve. We will try to do it with as much professional integrity, independence and objectivity -- with as much respect for truth, fairness and accuracy -- as the community itself.
