Diversity In The Accounting Profession Essay Research

Paper

This article is an account of a panel discussion concerning diversity among the accounting profession. Minorities and Women continue to be underrepresented in the accounting profession. There are a few different reasons why this is so; ?a lack of knowledge among minorities about a CPA career, or a ?glass ceiling?, that discourages entry into the profession or leads to an early departure; and competition from other professions?. All of the panelists questioned felt that minorities were not well represented in accounting and if they were, they made early exits from the profession. They blame this discordance on an unappealing job that doesn?t sound as good as a doctor or a lawyer. They think that people are misinformed about the accounting world. They talk about effective ways to bring more people in to the job, and how to implement them. Through education, and networking they hope to rebuild accounting?s good reputation. The article ends by giving a short biography on each of the speakers in the discussion.

I felt that the article was very informative and helpful. Before reading this I had no idea of the state of disparity among the races and sexes there were in the accounting workplace. Now I have a better idea of the reality of things. I think that many industries

face the exact same problems when trying to include minorities and women into the workplace. Sometimes there aren?t enough employees that well equipped for the job and in this case not enough interested employees. I was also surprised at the section talking about salaries of accountants not being as high as they used to be. I always thought that accountants brought in a fair salary, and that accounting was a respectable job, but this article makes it sound like compared to a doctor or lawyer, an accountant might as well work at McDonald?s. I still believe there is an amount of respect and hard work associated with accounting and I hope that the minorities continue to come into this line of work. I thought the discussion format added to the readability of the article and it also made it a little more interesting to hear more than one point of view.