Why Don’t Accounting and Auditing Have Eponyms?

AUDIT IS TRUSTWORTHY!? It is poised and stolid despite imperfection.

This message needs to be instilled in the doxastic state of society.? One of the ways to do that is to eponymize its great achievements and celebrate its great ideas with pageantry.? Auditing needs eponyms.

An eponym is “the?name?of an?object?or?activity?that is also the?name?of the?person?who first?produced?the?object?or did the?activity,” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2024).[1] It is “a name, especially a place name,?derived?from the name of a?real?or?mythical?person, as for?example?Constantinople?from?Constantine?I (Collins Dictionary, 2024).[2]

In all cultures, and from early human history, eponyms have been used as honorifics in literally all fields of endeavor, except, as I am now finding, in accounting and auditing.? I was a bit taken aback after searching widely without seeing an accountant or auditor named after any of the profound ideas from our profession that shaped human civilization.? For those who are spiritually hypersensitive, I want to say that eponyms don’t suggest meliorism, they are not deification or fetishization, they are expressions of gratitude to deserving people who make impact in society, just like the Nobel prize is not a gesture of idolatry any more than your college diploma could be.?

For a profession whose work is “among the finest inventions of the human mind” that confers "immediate advantages” to any economy (Goethe, 1924),[3] accounting should have a book of eponyms like we have for architecture, engineering, medicine, social sciences, etc.

Arthur Levitt Jr, former US SEC Chairman, has noted that accountants and auditors are the most underappreciated and have not captured the imagination of the society.? But what is worrying is what he called “the silences,” namely, that the profession is not even engaging in some self-advocacy and self-praise like doing things to honor and memorialize its members and their achievements visibly.? A few prizes are awarded here and there in the profession, but the events are so quiet, low-key that the market does not notice it to be captured in its imagination.? Compare that to when the Nobel prize, the Pulitzer price, or the Grammies are being awarded.? The attention of the world is not only captured; its perseveration becomes culturally formative.? Don’t tell me it is all falderals.? Well, I disagree. It is inspiring and transformational to society, it is productive gratitude.

Honorific eponyms are important because, according to Richard Livingstone, the people so honored become ideals to emulate which is inspirational.? Their presence in society is important because according to Alfred Whitehead, “moral education is impossible without the habitual vision of greatness.” Brooks referred to these when he argued that “a tale of the excellent lifts the ambition of the living.”? Raising confident professional posterity in an environment that is lacking heroic ideals is not going to be easy, it would be difficult to have young people aspire for greater heights that yield innovation.? That is perhaps why we do not have enough young people today aspiring to become accountants and auditors.? As a result, we are not replenishing ourselves in the profession – so sad.

My professional colleagues, please what is wrong with having accounting and audit eponyms to be celebrated?? In our contemporary time we have seen ideas that are eponym-worthy.? What are we waiting for?? Think of such names as Dr. Rainer Lenz and Richard Chambers to mention just two. They have introduced ideas that are transformative to our doxastic states and our professional practice. ?These are eponym-worthy.? I will elaborate on these two in future posts.

Accounting and audit produce intangible benefits so we tend to regard their great ideas and services as “credence goods,” (Foley, 2024).[4] ?In case you wonder if intangible ideas are prize-worthy, please know that “an innovation is an idea that has been successful,”(2024).[5] Cobban, P., Nair, R., & Painchaud, N. (2019),[6] clarify that novel ideas and processes are also innovation:

“to us, innovation doesn’t mean mere inventiveness. In our work we define it as ‘something different that creates value.’ It isn’t just the purview of engineers and scientists, nor is it limited to new-product development. Processes can be innovated. Marketing approaches can too. Something different can be a big breakthrough, but it can also be an everyday improvement that makes the complicated a bit simpler or the expensive more affordable.”?

New ideas, when profound, can be considered discoveries or innovations.

So, when our peers come up with profound ideas that improve our thoughts, professional practice and quality of the affordances that we deliver society, they deserve formal accolades.

McCloskey reminds us of the role of ideas in our civilization when she wrote about “how ideas, not capital or institutions, enriched the world.”? In enunciating the Great Enrichment, she said that “our riches did not come from piling brick on brick, or bachelor’s degree on bachelor’s degree or bank balance on bank balance, but from piling idea on idea,” (McCloskey, 2016).[7]? Therefore, ideas are prize-worthy, they should be acclaimed, the ideators should be eponymized.

Accountants and auditors need to eschew self-abnegation and change our cynical, self-reproachful attitude towards honor and gratitude.?

Gratitude makes us healthier culturally, professionally, socially, spiritually, and economically.? ?So, let’s eponymize the deserving. Gratitude matters – in all circumstances.

Remember,

AUDIT IS TRUSTWORTHY!? It is poised and stolid despite imperfections.

[1] Cambridge Dictionary. (2024a). Eponym definition and meaning | Collins english dictionary. Meaning of Eponym in English. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/eponym

[2] Collins Dictionary (2024). Eponym definition and meaning | Collins english dictionary. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/eponym

[3] Goethe, J. W. (1924). Wilhelm Meisters apprenticeship and travels. C. Scribners Sons.

[4] Foley, S. (2024a, May 6). Why don’t auditors find fraud? Why don’t auditors find fraud? https://www.ft.com/content/9f16dc90-ea79-4abf-92f9-2391b2b73ced

[5] Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson and Centre for Business History. (2024). What constitutes an innovation? https://www.ericsson.com/en/about-us/history/products/other-products/what-constitutes-an-innovation

[6] Cobban, P., Nair, R., & Painchaud, N. (2019). Breaking down the barriers to innovation. Harvard Business Review.

[7] McCloskey, D. N. (2016). Bourgeois equality: How ideas, not capital or institutions, enriched the world. University of Chicago Press.