I was asked yesterday why my work roams across tax, economics, accountancy and audit. It was suggested that this is unusual.<\/p>\n
It was an interesting challenge, but one that was not hard to answer as it turned out.<\/p>\n
Each of these disciplines is involved with four issues.<\/p>\n
First they seek to identify transactions.<\/p>\n
Then they seek to value them.<\/p>\n
Then they want to appropriately record them.<\/p>\n
Thereafter each wants to appraise their consequences.<\/p>\n
Underpinning them all is a significant degree of potential commonality in that case.<\/p>\n
Conceptually they are actually even more alike. That\u2019s because very rare exceptions apart each concerns itself with the change in the state of a claim on property, whether that claim is individual or collective. In essence, when a boundary is crossed as a consequence of that changed state then an issue arises that is (or should be) of concern to them.<\/p>\n
In that case thinking developed in one area can, without much difficulty, usually be of relevance in another.<\/p>\n
So why the problem with me thinking across them all? That\u2019s because people don\u2019t. In our world hyper-specialisation is promoted.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve lost count of the number of times I have been told that if only I\u2019d decided to concentrate on just one theme I might have been much more useful. My reply is always very confident. It is \u201cNo I wouldn\u2019t, because I\u2019d have lost sight of the big picture\u201d.<\/p>\n
Big pictures matter. Too few look at them. It would be good if more did. We might then see the wood for the trees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"