"OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD THE ACCOUNTING PROFESSION"
THE OPENING PAGES OF THIS SPEECH AND OTHERS, GIVING A PERSONAL IMPRESSION OF RAY GARRETT, JR., HAVE BEEN GRACIOUSLY PROVIDED BY HARVEY L. PITT.

An Address by
Ray Garrett, Jr., Chairman
Securities and Exchange Commission

Presented before
ARTHUR ANDERSEN & CO. ANNUAL PARTNERS' MEETING
New York Hilton Hotel
September 11, 1974
New York City

It has often seemed to me that one of the more quiet curses of the present age has been too much introspection, if not madness. So I have urged young people to resist the modern teacher's obsession with self-examination and proclaim the lately popular identity crisis as neurotic hogwash. One learns who he is and his relation to other people and the world not by brooding over insolvable enigmas but by doing. Adulthood arrives when we find ourselves worrying more about the welfare of other persons -- spouses, children, parents, customers, clients, etc. -- than of ourselves. Only in this direction does one find health, reasonable happiness and the moral life.

As my lecture continues, I point out that the learned professions have these important qualities in abundance. They inevitably lead to a more healthy, happy and moral life for the professional man because he is compelled to the outward-directed life of caring about others and has little time to stew over who he really might be.

Now I discover how naive I have been all along. What can I say when one of our eminent accounting firms finances a study on whether people like accountants and then devotes an entire morning to a morbid examination of the findings? The only thing worse is that the study also found that people generally like securities regulators a good deal less than they do accountants. Now, of course, that shows how little people understand the difficult job we are trying to do for their benefit -- how hard we work, how diligent we are and how we suffer when they are injured. They cannot possibly understand how it hurts to learn of their lack of appreciation, their base ingratitude, in response to such self-sacrifice. Perhaps this was all a foul plot by your managing partners to embarrass us long-suffering servants of the people. Since the findings cannot possibly be correct, we ought to investigate and spread the true story before the American people, who have a right to know whether they like SEC Commissioners.

But we won't investigate, because, you see, we really don't care. We're mature professionals who simply do our duty as we see it, obviously oblivious to the passions of the mob. We constantly strive for this sublime attitude -- especially when we flunk a popularity contest. Furthermore, we learn from experience, including the experience of others. If we ever finance a survey on the popular attitude toward federal securities regulators, we are going to hear the results in a soundproof room before letting them get any further. We want to be certain that the scientific survey was properly conducted.

In view of our predilection today for staring at the mirror, rather than attempt further to embellish the subject of what other people think of accountants, I would like to talk about what we at the SEC think about you. In fact, I was rather invited to do this by Harvey Kapnick. When he explained what you would be up to all morning and then suggested this, I was reminded of the prewar movie star who was conversing with a friend and carried on a thirty minute monologue about her joys and triumphs, pains and defeats, on and off the silver screen. Finally she turned to her companion with a sigh and said, "But enough about me. Let's talk about you for awhile. What did you think of my latest picture?"

And so it goes, in the accounting profession as well as the lively arts. But I'm not going to talk specifically about Arthur Andersen & Co. It is tempting to do so. Your firm was very much with me in my years of practice in Chicago and had been with my father and our clients and friends. I could tell many a tale of great diligence and labor, of outstanding pigheadedness when your man couldn't see the superior quality of my views, and heroic capacity for whiskey at midnight at the printers. These are doubtless the more important things in life, but to reminisce in such a vein would scarcely contribute to the serious deliberation of your annual meeting.

So let me share a few observations on the relationship of the SEC to accountants and the accounting profession. These are times when we have let passions and suspicions and recitations run pretty high in many areas, and I think it is appropriate to look back as well as forward and consider the ties that bind as well as the forces that pull us apart. I am really appalled at the growing strength of separatist movements in more and more areas of modern society -- ours and those of other nations. At the very time when we are becoming more and more involved in each others' welfare and even survival, it is depressing to find this urge to break off into smaller and inevitably hostile units....

back