AS QUOTED
“As an analyst I was very comfortable being uncomfortable, and as a CFO I have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. I have to be fine with delivering bad news.”

—Sallie Krawcheck, CFO, Citigroup

SPOTLIGHT
Buy Me Some Peanuts and Cracker Jack
f the sun is shining outside, you’re likely to find Jack Oujo, CPA, on a baseball field. The former AAA minor league umpire just can’t get the game off his mind.

In addition to running Jack Oujo CPA Inc. of Wall, N.J., Oujo coached his son Christopher’s Junior League team of 14-year-olds to its first state championship last fall, then umpired 35 Division 1 college games in April and May (“I did get a little busy in April,” he acknowledges), then spent the summer coaching 10-year-old son Matthew’s Little League team.

“We have a sign in our kitchen that says, ‘We interrupt this family for baseball season,’” Oujo says. “I have a game every night—and tonight I’m taking 100 clients to watch the Lakewood Blue Claws play in the minor leagues.”

But don’t get the wrong idea. He’s hardly the kind of guy who plays around all day. When he was released from the minor leagues in 1988, Oujo immediately fell back on the accounting degree he had pursued in college. He took the CPA exam in 1989, passing all four parts in one session, and over the next four years added a CFP, a PFS, a master’s in taxation, a securities license and an insurance license to his resume.

Though he never made the Major Leagues, Oujo believes he has led a charmed life. “Most people would give anything to have a day in professional baseball—and I had eight years,” he says. “When I was single I had my baseball career and traveled all over the country, and now that I have a family I’m home with them.”

As for the combination of specialties, from tax to investments, Oujo says he’s “taken tax to the next level,” and encourages his fellow CPAs to do the same. “Adding financial planning to your practice is a great opportunity for yourself and for your clients,” he says. “The public loves having a CPA who also understands investments and discussing all their financial affairs in one place.”

—Cheryl Rosen

ALL IN A DAY’S WORK
A Very Long Audit

y sister, a nursing student at the time, had come to visit and arrived early enough to meet me at my client’s site. She came up to our audit room, met my fellow team members and sat at the partner’s desk, right next to mine. Our workload had slowed substantially, as we had just completed what was my fifth yearend audit for this client, and we were giddy with the excitement of having our first weekend off in quite some time.

After a lull in our group’s conversation, my sister looked at me with an expression of confusion.

“Cara? You’ve been here at this same client since you first started five years ago, right?”

“Yes, I have,” I replied, beaming with pride, reflecting on all I had learned over the past five years. No two days were alike with this client. There was constantly something new to learn; fresh, complex accounting issues arising during each year’s audit.

My sister shot back, “Well, what’s taking so long?”

Having never taken a business course in her life, she had no idea the client needed to have an audit performed each year.

—Cara Greene, CPA

TOP 10

Job-Hunt Tips

1 | Look for opportunities. Take on new assignments to broaden your skills. Put out feelers to see whether you’re marketable outside your company. On an interview, don’t passively expect to be told where you’ll fit in. Create a job for yourself.

2 | Become a skilled job hunter. Successful job seekers know what they want, understand the swings in the market and know how to present themselves.

3 | Develop new skills. If you lack experience, get some. While you are searching, take a course and learn something new. Join an association in an area related to your new skill. Volunteer so you can add practical experience to your resume.

4 | Target what you want. Select certain geographic areas, specific industries and sizes of organizations (large or small). Then find contacts in companies that meet your criteria.

5 | Expand your job-hunting targets. Think of other geographic regions for your job search. If you’re looking only at large firms, consider smaller and midsize ones. Or if you’re looking only at large public companies, consider privately owned ones or not-for-profits as well.

6 | See people two levels higher than yourself. Initially, do some research and contact people on your level to find out about an area of accounting and see how well your skills match up. Then contact people at a higher level who are in a position to hire you or recommend that you be hired.

7 | Follow up—and follow up some more. If someone took the time to meet with you, follow up with a thank-you note. After an interview, consider what they liked about you, what they didn’t and how you might influence the hiring decision.

8 | Expect to be in “search mode” for a while. Though you may find something right away, it is sensible to develop financial backup plans. What side work can you do to earn extra money? How can you cut expenses?

9 | Build relationships with lots of people. Practice your pitch with them to become more self-confident about the interview process. Even if they don’t have a job at the moment, something could open up soon. Keep in touch via mail or e-mail.

10 | Keep your spirits high. Many job hunters get discouraged and drop out of the race. Don’t be one of them. What you’re going through is not easy and you’re not alone. Hang in there and eventually you’ll find a job.

Source: Five O’Clock Club, New York, 2006.

BOOKMARKS

Policies and Procedures to Prevent Fraud and Embezzlement: Guidance, Internal Controls, and Investigation
By Edward J. McMillan
308 pages; softcover
John Wiley & Sons Inc., Hoboken, N.J., 2006

Nearly every enterprise is a potential victim of fraud, and CPAs well-versed in the scope of fraudulent activities can help businesses prepare for the worst scenarios. Management and auditors will find this manual helpful in evaluating internal control systems to expose weaknesses, take corrective action and avert fraud.

Author Edward J. McMillan, a fraud examiner and CPA, advises a victimized company first to contact an independent CPA firm to assist with the investigation, insurance claims and going to trial, if necessary. Before a company implements the policies and procedures he discusses, an attorney should review them for compliance with federal, state and local laws.

In a workbook format, this publication lists the methods a company should employ to avoid embezzlement and offers sample forms for confidentiality agreements, conflicts of interest and check and wire transfer signatures, among others. Auditors complying with the requirements of Statement on Auditing Standards no. 99, Consideration of Fraud in a Financial Statement Audit, should find helpful the nearly 130 pages of illustrative policies and procedures in the section titled “Internal Control Analysis, Documentation and Recommendations”; the material also is available on a companion Web site. Additional sections provide case studies of actual embezzlements, profiles of the perpetrators and detailed data on identity theft issues. The fraud glossary is reprinted from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.

—Barbara J. Shildneck

TOP 10

Tips for New Leaders

1 | Don’t get too close too quickly. It’s tempting to become one of the gang—a friend who happens to be the boss—but effective leaders have to manage the distance between themselves and their followers.

2 | Sharpen your situation-sensing antennae. Try to be sensitive to which way the wind is blowing.

3 | Take symbolic actions. Small improvements can make a vast difference in the lives and performance of followers.

4 | Create a compelling narrative. Bring your story alive through rich examples, personal experience, analogies and stories.

5 | Personal differences are leadership assets in this context. Have the self-knowledge to realize what makes you different and to make your differences work in your new context.

6 | Create positive pressure. Talk about your market share and competitors.

7 | Reveal weaknesses after revealing your strengths. Effective leaders reveal themselves as being human.

8 | Conform enough to connect. An organization cannot be changed overnight. Understand the new culture and context.

9 | Find sources of honest feedback. It is lonely at the top. Cultivate safe, critical and true information and feedback.

10 | Don’t forget you are the same person. Never lose touch with where you come from and who you are.

Adapted by permission of Harvard Business School Press from Why Should Anyone Be Led by You? What It Takes to Be an Authentic Leader, by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones. Copyright 2006 Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones. All rights reserved.

SURVEY SAVVY
Women Pull Up a Chair
Women held 14.7% of all Fortune 500 board seats, up from 13.6% in 2003 and 9.6% in 1995, according to a 2005 census of women board directors by Catalyst (www.catalyst.org). The number of Fortune 500 companies that had 25% or more women board directors rose to 64 in 2005 from 11 in 1995.

NUMEROLOGY

Responsibility at the Top

Source: “Salary Guide 2006 for Accounting and Financial Professionals,” Ajilon Finance and Business Finance magazine.

BUSINESS TRENDS

Litigation Breather

Investors filed 45% fewer class-action lawsuits alleging securities fraud in the first half of 2006 compared with the same period in 2005, according to a report by Stanford Law School’s Securities Class Action Clearinghouse. The 61 filings marked the lowest number for any six-month period since the first half of 1996.

So, why less litigation? Joseph Grundfest, Stanford University law professor and director of the Securities Class Action Clearinghouse, said one possibility is that corporate-governance initiatives have made it harder for plaintiffs to allege fraud.

The data should be interpreted with caution, however, said John Gould, vice-president of Cornerstone Research and a major contributor to the study. He said it’s too early to tell whether the numbers represent a long-term trend.

The study also found a decline of 44% in market capitalization losses related to securities fraud class-action lawsuits filed in the first half of 2006. The decline reflects both the lower number of filings and a lower average loss per filing.