More often than not, accountants, auditors and financial consultants come across a professional “bug” commonly and famously known as “The Expectation Gap” affecting not only smaller firms but also corporate worlds.
The domain of specific and general advice is so vast that businesses eventually fail to capture the crux and relevance of a sound financial system and department, leading them to approach accountants, auditors and consultants only when it is almost too late. This situation forces accountants, financial consultants and experts to dwell more into putting in place curative measures rather than preventive measures, what we commonly refer to as “Damage control”. However, expectation from businesses and the less informed public is loosely based on assumptions of curative measures and damage control adding value to businesses. Reality begs to differ for curative steps can only, and to a certain extent, control damage that may, sometimes and unfortunately, be irreversible. What every business requires is preventive measures which would add value in day to day operations, hence generating a better output with minimal damage.
This is probably the first and the largest expectation gap – “Value-added services”, arising due to failure of understanding the profession and most importantly, failure to bridge the gap between current and historic information, hence arises another gap – “Time lag”.
How do we minimize this expectation gap and time lag? By communication and creating awareness of the profession, not only to larger businesses but to the general and less informed public. Is this possible? Yes, it is possible as long as creating awareness is treated as a two-way interactive process rather than just feeding in information to unwilling listeners. Modes of communication include social media platforms, digital media, regular seminars and several learning programs.
Create awareness that accounting and finance have now moved beyond the regular debits and credits, into a more complex and important structure. Awareness that accounting and finance have moved beyond meeting regular statutory requirements imposed by regulatory boards. Awareness that accounting and finance connect our internal world to the external world. This creates new avenues of value-added services and also minimizes not only the expectation gap but also reduces the time lag.
