#22 Confidential Records
Feb 25th, 2009 by pfi
Though you’ll be hard pressed to find one who openly admits it, accountants love reading this stuff. Stock grants, board minutes, commission payouts, employee resumes, ADP wages, and so on. Accountants love reading confidential records when they think nobody is watching over them.
Accountants routinely handle sensitive data and have entered into confidentiality agreements to maintain privacy. Let’s move on from NDA discussion and get to the interesting stuff.
One form of confidential records is a public company’s financial statements before release. An accountant will know time-sensitive earnings and will also know how they compare to analyst targets. On financial websites, people have to guess and argue back and forth about a company’s earnings. The accountant doesn’t have to guess. The accountant simply looks down at paper and sees what will be released. This goes without saying, but accountants are not allowed to trade on insider info.
Another form of confidential records is an employee’s file. An accountant may perform procedures in the payroll process and go through the resume of someone they work with day to day and despise. This often leads to playing the game called, ‘How much does this person make?’ Accountants love reading this stuff and feeling privileged.
“You said you were a manager at XYZ firm?”
“Yeah, that was a while ago.”
“Well your resume says you only worked there for 2 years.”
“Wait, how do you -”
“Oh, um, just kidding, since I would never read up on that stuff. It’s personal and needs to remain private.”
“Right …”
With all the things that suck with the job (think 99%), reading confidential records is one of the few occasions where an accountant can say with a straight face that they don’t hate their job.
but that part sucks too, coz then you find out that the idiot who prepared the pbc’s actually makes more than you… a LOT more…
there is a reason why junior members perform payroll vouching while more senior folks ignore it.
I remember doing the audit of an insurance company as a peon and I had to look through actual death certificates. Before I knew it I was trying to find the most bizarre ways in which these individuals had died.
My firm actually sent out an email titled “When PII (personally identifiable information) becomes TMI” #$%^
Don’t forget about looking at the files of terminated employees for interesting stories, and seeing how many people the terminated employee is trying to throw under the bus on his/her way out. There’s some beautiful stuff in there.
Well of course. There has to be SOMETHING that keeps them putting up with the abuse.
Isn’t it all about the confidential documents? Get to da shredda!
I thoroughly enjoyed reviewing all the lawsuits one particular company was involved with. Some of the allagations from former employees were absolutely hilarious. Great way to pass the time on an otherwise boring day.