Welcome! I am Your Mindful Accountant (Start Here)
The Mindful Bookkeeper is now Your Mindful Accountant.
Welcome!
Whether this is your first time visiting or you have been around for a while (and also wondering where I've been), I want to take this opportunity to reintroduce myself.
To begin, my name is Chioma (Chee-oh-mah), and I am no longer The Mindful Bookkeeper.
I am Your Mindful Accountant.
While the updated title might appear to be for rebranding purposes, it is so much more. It is a reflection of what me and what my business have always been. It is exactly who I am as a professional. It is who I need to be to you as service provider.
I am an accountant, and I have always provided accounting services. Those accounting services were always provided with from a place of consciousness, attention to detail, awareness, neutrality, and focus.
In other words, mindful.
The change in the name will be explained in greater detail in subsequent posts. For now, I’d like to share what Your Mindful Accountant stands for.
Your Mindful Accountant stands for trust. That includes building, maintaining, and standing firm for it.
Trust gives room for honesty, transparency, and clarity.
Trust gives room for telling the truth.
When it comes to accounting, it is very important to trust your numbers.
Your character, as the business owner, is reflected in your numbers. The character of your business is also reflected in the numbers. When your numbers can be trusted, you and your business can be trusted.
Throughout my career, I’ve seen the impact of not being able to trust the numbers. The numbers could not be trusted because the people behind the numbers could not be trusted. That also meant the business could not be trusted.
The impact due to not being trustworthy can have a devastating impact on others.
My accounting career began in 2004.
I was 24 years old and was working as an intern on the audit team for a company called BDO Seidman. The internship was part of Northeastern University’s Graduate School of Professional Accounting (GSPA for short), where, later that year, I’d earn a Master’s degree in Accounting as well as an MBA.
On that audit team were former Arthur Andersen employees. Those former employees lost their jobs when Arthur Andersen collapsed in 2002. Ten years later, I'd connect with a former Arthur Andersen partner and learn about how he lost everything, including his home, retirement, and the ability to fund his children's education, as a result of the Andersen/Enron scandal.
Arthur Andersen was convicted of obstruction of justice for shredding documents related to the audit of Enron. Arthur Andersen was Enron’s accountant, and it was once the largest of the ‘Big Five’ accounting firms. The other four, which are also today’s ‘Big Four’ (there is no longer a ‘Big Five’), are Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, and Deloitte.
Arthur Andersen’s downfall was due to using accounting tactics to hide Enron’s debt from failed deals and inflate profits. Those tactics were revealed through the efforts of an internal whistleblower and Wall Street analysts investigating suspicious earnings.
In 2007, I’d again witness the impact of numbers not telling the truth.
I was working as an Internal Auditor for a video game company called Take-Two Interactive Software (Take-Two for short). For the gamers, they’re the geniuses behind the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise. Bonus points if you are familiar with the ‘Hot Coffee’ scandal.
I had only been working at Take-Two for one month when the Chief Accounting Officer/Controller was escorted out of the office building in handcuffs. Later that evening, I’d learn the General Counsel and the Chief Executive Officer were also arrested.
All plead guilty to stock options back dating, which resulted in years of financial statements that had to be restated. They also suffered reputational damage to their careers, including being banned from working in publicly traded companies, and had to pay multiple six figures in financial penalties. The Chief Accounting Officer and General Counsel lost their professional licenses.
To explain the stock options backdating fraud, let's use the example of a winning lottery ticket. Let’s pretend you bought a lottery ticket today. However, the $1 million winning ticket was sold yesterday. To backdate, you’d change your ticket to the winning numbers and replace today’s date with yesterday’s in order to claim the earnings.
The problem is, you technically did not win the lottery. You cheated and pocketed the money. And because you are also a business that is public, you probably did not disclose the earnings.
In the case of Take Two's stock options, the fraud wasn't just the executives pocketing the profits—it was lying on the corporate books and hiding the cash handouts from investors and tax authorities.
The numbers not telling the truth showed up once again in 2019.
This time it involved a small insurance company run by a father, who employed his son. In addition to the son were three employees and a handful of contractors that were called agents. I was the part-time in-house bookkeeper.
One month into my tenure, the father began submitting receipts for lavish expenses for me to record in QuickBooks. The expenses appeared to be personal in nature as they were related to a boat, multiple luxury cars, dinners, and jewelry. Despite my doubts, I recorded them as business expenses because there was supporting documentation, in the form of receipts, for the purchases. Also, a reasonable explanation was always provided for how the expenses were business related.
Unfortunately, the lavish expenses were causing the business to spend more than it earned. That also meant the business started having trouble paying its bills, including the agents.
The agents brought business to the insurance company. Because the agents were not being paid, they started complaining, not to the father…but to the son, who was already planting seeds that he was the future owner of the business.
The son broke into his father's office to obtain the business financials. As an aside, the father always locked his office when he was not in it. After reviewing the financials, he realized his father had been lying to him about the business finances. Not only were the numbers not telling the truth, the son knew why the numbers were not telling the truth.
That’s when the son decided he was done with the lies.
The son gave the agents my personal phone number (which I did not appreciate) hoping I would tell the agents about the business finances. He also hoped that when the agents learned the alleged truth, the agents would leave his father’s business, which would then ruin his father’s business.
Legally, I could not (and did not) share any financial information with the agents. Instead, I resigned one day after my phone number was shared.
A month later after I resigned, I received a phone call from the son. He told me he no longer worked for his father. He also told me he no longer had a relationship with his father.
While he happily shared the news I felt sad for him and his family.
Based on the stories I shared, let's highlight what happened when the numbers did not tell the truth:
People lost their jobs, home, and retirement.
The largest accounting firm in the world and a massive fortune 500 company collapsed.
Executives were banned from working at publicly traded companies.
The executives that were banned from working at publicly traded companies also earned a bad reputation.
Professionals lost their license to practice.
A business had difficulty paying its bills.
The relationship between a father and a son was destroyed.
And as someone who is part of those stories, I must add that the work environments were tense. Employee morale in every business mentioned was down. And I wish the release of my personal number to angry agents looking for their money was the only time I felt unsafe at a job.
You might be thinking, "This wouldn't happen to me and my business."
Or perhaps the thought is, "That happens to larger businesses, not small ones like mine."
If you are thinking some version of the above, I understand.
I'm also sure Arthur Andersen, Enron, Take-Two, and even that small insurance company didn't think they would experience what happened to them.
But they did.
I'm not trying to scare you.
However, I want to keep it real because what I shared does happen to small businesses.
This is why I am sharing what happens when the numbers do not tell the truth.
I also want you to understand why Your Mindful Accountant stands for truth.
Next I will share the evidence of the numbers not telling the truth.
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