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Learning from Mistakes (
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Yesterday I noted that the nomination period for the next ICAO council election is now open. One of my friends noticed that the original invitation to vote was signed by "Michael K. Banks, CA, Secretary". Today, a curious second e-mail came out with the subject line "Legal Notice - Official Call for ICAO Council Election Nominations". I didn't pay close attention to it, with a busy day not giving me a lot of time to look careful - but it really seemed odd they repeated the notice a second time. That same friend, being a good auditor, took a good look at the second e-mail and noted the enhancement: the second invite is signed by "Michael K. Banks, CPA, CA, Secretary". I wonder whether someone within the ICAO quickly noticed the missing "new" CPA designation, or whether this was in response to someone outside the Institute calling them out on the oversight? I'm guessing an insider called them out on the mistake - a silly little oversight, though...
It's good to be proud of your work. If you've done a good job, you can take pleasure in the fact that it's error free. And yet, people may say things like, "are you sure you didn't double-count those items?" You may be 100% correct in saying, "of course I didn't," with a self-righteous huff. That doesn't mean you should , though. Let's assume that you are in fact correct. Rather than scorn those who are helping you by examining your work to avoid embarassing mistakes, thank them for their concern and interest. Then let's assume that the people asking you are very knowledgeable, and they aren't just asking the question to give you a hard time. Now stop and ask yourself, "why are they asking me this?" Is it, perhaps, because your work may in fact be entirely correct, but you didn't present your thought process in a very clear and logical manner? Are you hiding some important facts or assumptions which cause people to second...
Something that helped me immensely when I was preparing for the CKE , and should be helpful to anyone taking a multiple choice test designed by halfwits, was to realize that the test was probably designed by someone who wasn't thinking things through very much. Reading too much into a question is a recipie for anguish and anger. If you make it all the way through this rant you'll pick up a tip that will prove invaluable on your next multiple choice test. Yes, you may be right when presented with all the possible exceptions to a scenario, but in an ordinary multiple choice question, go with the answer they're "looking for" rather than the answer that shows off how smart you are. It's sad but true: learning more facts and gaining more knowledge than expected of you can actually end up harming you, when you're presented what the test writer would consider to be a "simple" question. Right lane, left lane : right answer, left answer. Step away from the...
The newest gem to land in Toronto's lap is a report on where services can be cut back to save money - you can read the report yourself here - the city has kindly posted the PDF for all to see . According to NOW Magazine, the report cost $300,000 , which suggests a 1000 hour job if the consultants charged about $300 an hour to do the work. That's just a wild guesstimate, but scale the hours and hourly rate accordingly based on how much work you think it took to put this report together. It's not surprising, if NOW's math is to be correct, that only $15 million of savings has been identified, however, considering the majority of the findings in the report are in the "low" savings category, which means it'll save us 5% or less. Did the consultants correctly identify the risk associated with publishing a report where they were going to draw the ire of everyone from cyclists to dentists? Who angers dentists, seriously ? Candy companies. And global consultancies...
I just mentioned CH Canada last week . 2 days after my post, they went bankrupt . Ouch. Here's a list of the dead sites, courtesy of the bankruptcy trustee : As a consequence of the bankruptcy, DB Media will not be fulfilling any customer orders through its DVD clubs as of December 9, 2010 as the Canadian operations have ceased. The following lists the DVD Clubs affected by the bankruptcy: DVD CLUB: http://www.columbiahouse.ca/ DVD CLUB: http://www.columbiahousecanada.com CHCanada: http://www.chcanada.com/ French CHCanada: http://www.cineetcie.ca/ HH: http://www.healthharmony.ca/ Bookscene: http://www.bookscene.ca/ Although the company is dead, and no more shipments will be going out, if you owe money, they'd like you to pay up: A&M Canada, serving as Trustee, is now in the process of collecting amounts owed to the book and DVD clubs. If you have an outstanding amount owing to DB Media, we would appreciate immediate payment of your account in full. What a very polite sentiment...
I suppose there's not anything wrong with being a gofer, or a dogsbody , but there's no doubt that there's this precious moment of complete disillusionment when a young business graduate finds himself fetching a dozen lunch orders at Petit Four . Each brutally customized by the sadists known as his co-workers. In the name of "researching the human condition," I decided to be posh and get myself some food there too. I ended up observing the poor schmuk placing a lunch order so large, it clearly had to be his company's idea of a hazing ritual. From a distance he looked like the typical suit coming down for his Fancy Power Lunch, but up close you could see the naive youth. "Work hard, follow these orders. Climb the ladder Monty!" As enlightening as my research was - conclusion, he really should've called ahead with his crazy order - I did want lunch, and the one person ahead of me wasn't getting any service at the cash. Fortunately the lunch rush...
If there's anything Chartered Accountants excel at, it's more than just numbers. It's unsolicited design critique. Really PwC? Your alumni are in shock . PriceWaterhouseCoopers has completed their rebranding as of yesterday, and people who work for, used to work for, or simply associate with PwC are scratching their heads at the rebranding that just came through. Before we get to the colours, check out the video on their home page. Let me know how hard you cringe. It's great fun to watch the senior executive at the 0:55 mark stating that PwC is "building relationships, enhancing value". Their new slogan is "Building relationships, creating value." The caption on the screen even says "creating value." I'm curious to know: did they want to be "cool" and show a related word for "creating," or did they goof, have him record the wrong line, and decided to go with it anyway and hoped no one would notice? I mean really, how...
This post is an example of where the mindset of the Hardcore CA will take you. In AuditLand and other corporate environments, when something goes Horribly Wrong, rather than point blame and string people up, you have a "Lessons Learned" moment, which can either be a casual debrief, or an exhaustive exercise in identifying what mistakes were made, and how they can be avoided in the future. There will no doubt be some very professional investigations conducted into what happened this weekend at the Toronto G20 riots. One of the most shocking images online and on TV came from the fires that consumed Toronto police cars , which initially engendered some extremely sceptical treatment. After all, they just bought a water cannon - couldn't they handle a fire quickly and safely? This presumed that the security teams knew they may need to use it as a firefighting vehicle; given the delays it's probably safe to assume wasn't planned for. This makes sense, considering its stated...
I missed out on the madness downtown today. I followed it on my phone, but missed all the live TV footage which no doubt justifiably enraged my friends. I did catch stills like this one which from a local Toronto photographer show why the city was on edge all week long. It's perhaps best I wasn't around - I could've had my camera smacked down to the ground by an imported officer from Peel region. Of course he might've been on edge - not sure if this was before or after one of those police cars was set on fire. The you'll "be on Youtube" response, while accurate, was rather snarky to the point of inviting an assault. Not justifying, of course - this is clearly a criminal offence by a police officer. Also freakish: random arrest videos by plainclothes officers. I should point out that some well-meaning people naively claim that when store windows got smashed in, the "peaceful" protesters should've taken action to stop the anarchists and ne'er...
The most hardcore protesters of the day, June 22: courtesy Toronto Police Service's "LGBT protest on Queen St. W. without incident" album . Photo credit: Kevin Masterman Writer/Photographer for Toronto Police Security guards have a cushy job guarding the lobbies of the big fancy downtown office towers during G20 week. They of course have a solemn duty to make sure anyone getting in the building has a proper security card. I do believe the two gentleman guarding our lobby almost glanced at the card clipped to my belt as I wandered in out of the rain yesterday. If they asked, I would have of course good-naturedly held up my pass for closer inspection. "Yes, it is in fact I, Super Auditor." Or whatever. This is of course unnecessary: since I am able to dress the part of Super Auditor, Defender of Capitalism, or whatever you want to call the productive inhabitants of the downtown core, the hard plastic card I carry with me is almost entirely superfluous - except for...
I could probably come up with an extensive series of articles on how, although multi-tasking is awesome, there are so many glorious ways to fail at it. Or one long article with many examples. I'll settle for shooting off one quick example instead. Consider a busy day, where your computer is chugging because of some new security patch getting automatically downloaded. You go to open one window in your database program. It takes some time. So you're sitting there, waiting for it to finish loading. Getting impatient and thinking, "I'll just work on this other file in the meantime." Half an hour later that other file might be done. And maybe you've taken some phone calls. Perhaps gotten a fresh coffee. Checked out the silly headlines. Oh look, not enough Obama in town. What will Chicago ever do? And the Flavia sourced coffee is rancid as ever. You're back at your computer, the window has loaded in the database program. You have no idea why it's open, so you...
One of the fun assignments in my job is testing a company's security. It sort of looks like this. We specifically look at the security of computer systems, although it'll sometimes include physical security as well - can ninjas break in to your data centre by climbing your barbed-wire fences and feeding strings of sausage to your guard dogs? It also often involves asking question like, "how do you avoid the scenario of people getting access to all the confidential information you have stored on your systems, or shared with a service provider ?" This problem has recently bedevilled AT&T and Apple , and the scariest thing is that they're not the only companies to have ever suffered a security breach, just the most convenient example in the headlines right now. Their situation is especially painful because two companies get dragged through the muck: the vendor of a device, and the service provider offering network access. Ideally the contracts between the companies...
Globally I'm sure this is still off the radar, but in Canada we're all in a state of shock, having learned that the government plans to spend a billion dollars hosting the G8 and G20 summits this month: the G8 in the rural town of Huntsville, and the G20 in downtown Toronto. $1,000,000,000. Nice. I've seen the first wave of spending allocated to installing more security cameras, presumably temporarily removing the garbage cans downtown and replacing them with transparent bags taped to lamp posts - which just look fabulous in a ghetto chic sort of way - and let's not forget the coup de grace. They're scraping all the posters and political propaganda stickers off the lamp posts as well. I've seen it on my bike rides to work. Heaven forbid Obama learn that Paul Oakenfold had a show at the Koolhaus in March and they didn't invite Barry to check it out. Newspapers are hot on the trail of this unfolding fiasco. The Post asked the ten federal agencies getting this...
To: Fieldwork Team Lead CC: Fieldwork Research Team From: Lab Executive Management Committee Recent Adverse Events Associated with the Accounting Application Market Research Study It has been brought to our attention that members of our team attempted to conduct research which led to negative publicity for our client and incidentally brought to light certain flaws in the design of the project. The project is halted until further reviews are completed. The Fieldwork Team Lead will be asked to receive approval from the Lab Executive Management Committee prior to resumption of the project. A thorough reevaluation of the research protocols to be employed will be expected, which should include independent research through selection of a random sample of industry participants of a statistically valid testing size that will allow for a more scientific and impartial assessment of market trends which avoids placing undue reliance on unreliable or biased entities. In the future, reading the about...
Absolutely nothing to do with accounting here, unless you consider the temporary failure to count the number of players on the field. This should make you feel better next time you completely fail at anything. Just think back to this sports report. Thanks Videosift. Oh, and I know the video spills right off the edge of the screen - I was going to fix it, but the Editorial Board declared it looked "awesome."
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