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Setting up and testing controls is a major part of any CFO's job ("Five Years and Accounting," July). That's why finance chiefs have internal-audit departments, controllers, accounting managers, and, hopefully, the necessary experience to determine when improvements must be made. Instead, they would rather provide information to the CPA audit team and let them determine if there is an error that might be material to the financial statements "taken as a whole."
What about misstatements that are material to management's decisions? What about the CFO's responsibility to management to provide current and accurate information? It's not just the CPAs or the public that rely on the information that the CFO is supposed to be providing. Sarbanes-Oxley just makes it a legal requirement for accounting departments to do their job rather than allow CPA audit teams to allow misstatements due to immateriality [involving] the financial statements taken as a whole — a view that is abused by audit teams.
When CFOs start recognizing their responsibility to verify their companies' financial information for accuracy and compliance, maybe they'll stop whining.
Tamara Sandoval
Via E-mail
I just got a copy of the July issue of CFO with a picture of former senator Paul Sarbanes on the cover. I wonder how many dartboards this month's cover is destined to be tacked on to?
Paul Moore
Via E-mail
I was quite disappointed to note the reaction of a significant number of finance chiefs and their bitter criticism of the onerous provisions of Sarbox and the steep costs.
True, there have been excesses. True, costs have far exceeded "perceived" benefits. But what about the overall long-term good that a well-designed and controlled environment could do for an enterprise?
Chandrasekar Venkataraman
Via E-mail
Diverse Voices on Diversity
I graduated with an accounting degree 30 years ago and am currently a CPA and CFE. The same issue that was a problem then is a problem today: the lack of diversity in the workplace ("Gap Analysis," June). For too long, companies have clung to the notion that the pool of viable candidates is too small, so the status quo remains in effect. If diversity were truly a priority, then companies would use every means necessary to reach minorities — through partnerships with historically black colleges and minority business associations, or establishing in-house programs to groom in-house talent. This country has many talented individuals who could contribute to the business community, but the business community has to decide it wants to harvest this talent and make a commitment for the long term for the effort to bear fruit.
Rhenechia Jones
Via E-mail
Diversity "targets" always translate into "quotas"; therefore, applicants are hired because of a particular race, religion, gender, or national origin. We have forgotten the most important issue: Is this the candidate who can deliver the most toward meeting the organization's objectives? Until we hire employees who are the best potential performers, we will be saddled with the mindless agenda of those who demand diversity for diversity's sake.
Wendell Cockrell
Beaverton, Oregon
I am a Latino (Mexican-American) finance professional who has 10 years of international finance/technology experience, and I can no longer get a job in my field of finance. I have an M.S. in finance, but when I interview here in Denver it seems as though they don't understand how the janitor got in for an interview.
My last assignment overseas was with a boutique investment bank in Jakarta, Indonesia. I sold syndicated debt to banks. I applied for a position at a bank in Denver as a business banker — essentially selling debt to small and midsize businesses. The bank felt that I was more qualified to be a "relationship manager," one step above a bank teller.
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