Is image letting accountants down?

It used to be tediously predictable. Tell most people outside the profession that you were an accountant and, even if they were polite or sober enough not to say it, you knew what they were thinking. Beancounter. Number-cruncher. No life, no creativity, no aspirations, just one of those grey people who scurries in at audit time and scurries out again and nobody notices they were even there. But is this now an out-moded stereotype? Richard Brass reports

In the past couple of years a whole new batch of reflex responses have been added when the 'accountant' word is mentioned, thanks to the less-than-rigorous practices of some executives in the Enron, WorldCom and other scandals. As well as wearing the traditional labels of dull, grey and unimaginative, hard-working accountants now may find themselves regarded as supine, negligent and, possibly, even criminal.

Image has always been a problem in accountancy, but perhaps never as much as since these scandals put the profession under the spotlight. Some say this proves that the old image was the appropriate one. As the goalkeepers of business, the argument runs, you want to see as little of your accountants as possible, and if you are seeing a lot of them something's wrong. Turning up to work on a skateboard dressed for clubbing might be all very well for the graphic arts department, but if the accountants start doing it questions will be asked in the boardroom.

But, short of scaring the clients off, an appealing image is important. It could help to ensure that the best quality recruits are attracted to the profession and dissuade other members of the business community from trying to steamroller their accounting colleagues. It could even attract clients. But, far more importantly, it would help at those difficult moments when, having been introduced to someone who directs music videos for Beyonce, you're asked what you do for a living and the whole room goes quiet.

A Monty Python sketch from 1969 set the standard for the prevailing image of accountants, with careers adviser John Cleese discouraging accountant Michael Palin from a career as a lion tamer. 'You are an appallingly dull fellow,' he says, 'unimaginative, timid, lacking in initiative, spineless, easily dominated, no sense of humour, tedious company and irrepressibly drab and awful. In most professions these would be considerable drawbacks. In chartered accountancy they are a positive boon.'

The truth or otherwise of this view aside, it's an image that has been hard to shake. Some firms try to attract recruits with adverts featuring accountants as slick, sexy creatures dressed in the coolest suits, and one publicity campaign in the mid-1990s assured anxious businesses that 'it's easier to sleep with a chartered accountant', but these efforts have so far failed to fix the glamour of accountancy in the popular imagination.

For branding experts, the profession offers a healthy challenge. Ian Stephens, senior consultant at branding firm Wolff Olins, says the problem is that nobody has ever really tried to correct the impression of what accountancy's about. 'Although Monty Python have a lot to answer for, the profession hasn't done anything to counter that,' he says. 'So you're left with those perceptions of the profession being more or less like the Civil Service 50 years ago.'

The model for how things could be improved, he says, lies in another industry seen until recently as even more colourless than accountancy. 'It's not that long ago that IT was regarded as techie and dull, and not the sort of career you'd want your children to go into. But that world's been transformed. While the truth in IT may be thousands of people sitting at computer screens doing monotonous work, when people think of the sector, particularly about going into it as a recruit, they think about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and the Google founders, people doing interesting jobs for huge amounts of money. Personalities come to mind.

'But when you think of accountants no people come to mind. You just think of a profession, of anonymous people in suits. I can't think of one accountant who can be described as a personality who would be widely recognised. So one solution is to market some personalities. Firms can do that, and the industry as a whole can do it.'

The profession should also be trumpeting the factor that persuades many recruits to take up counting beans despite the stigma: good money. While the clichéd public image is all about appearance and personality, the hard-cash side is just as encouraging as in supposedly more glamorous professions.

'What generates the buzz around the IT sector or investment banking is stories of people making lots of money,' says Stephens. 'Google is all over the financial press not just because it's an interesting piece of technology but because it's an interesting piece of technology that creates a huge amount of wealth. Part of what makes certain businesses and sectors talked about is the perception of fame and fortune, whether that's the music industry or being an entrepreneur like Richard Branson or working in an investment bank. You need to project that sense that, while of course most people in the profession will have a good job, it also provides chances to realise every dream you could have.

'It's also an odd conundrum that accountancy sits right at the heart of global capitalism, yet somehow it seems completely disconnected from the excitement. The people you see interviewed about what's going on are the CEOs, the investment bankers, the analysts, but never an accountant. The industry seems to have nothing to say, yet it's right there in the heart of it, in terms of how business works, of how value's created and how the world's going to be.

'There should be accountants up there talking about all kinds of things, and not just at budget time trying to decipher what the Chancellor's saying. Sure, the work in accountancy doesn't lend itself to brevity and clarity in point of view, but if the IT industry can speak snappily there's no reason why accountancy can't.'

But the old stereotype, misguided as it may be, contains one key, unsightly element which, Stephens believes, needs to be addressed. 'Without being unkind, there's something about accountants' dress sense that does nothing for them. Accountants come into organisations I've been in and they're a pretty drab-looking lot. There must be pressure to conform to a very dull dress code in accountancy firms, because I'm sure they go out on Friday night looking completely different.' He offers a direct, immediate solution. 'Every new recruit should be given Selfridge's clothing vouchers.'

That's one way forward. But figures from the US on enrolments in accountancy courses point to another, more radical solution. According to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, undergraduate and master's degrees in accountancy in the US fell by 23% between 1996 and 2000, boom years when the lure of traders' and analysts' jobs was stronger. But in the wake of Enron, the same institute's figures show a dramatic rise in enrolments, with some institutions reporting growth of more than 70% in the number of accountancy students.

The conclusion must be that there's nothing like a little controversy to glamourise your image. On the other hand, perhaps employers and clients like to be reassured by their accountant, rather than excited.

Richard Brass is a freelance columnist and feature writer, covering general and business issues for magazines and newspapers including The Times of London, the Daily Telegraph and The Observer. He is a former editor of Punch magazine.