Awash in a Sea of Credentials

Recently, a professional colleague posed to me a question: “Gary, you are a CPA and an English educator. Are there any rules on the order we are to use when listing our various credentials after our names when signing off on a business letter, proposal, or report?”

Aaaiii, I thought to myself, which hat do I wear to answer this question?

In the late-70s when I became a CPA, such a question would not have been asked. For those of us in the accounting profession, there were only two types of credentials—our university degree(s) and our CPA certificate. We typically listed our highest degree first and then followed with CPA. In my case, I signed off as Gary Willis, MBA, CPA.

Over the decades, our world changed. Now we live in a sea awash with credentials. We also live now among FASBs numbered in the mid-hundreds. I think FASB 13 was the newest pronouncement when I earned my CPA credential.

My colleague needed an answer, so I came up with one wearing my English educator hat. “Depends,” I said. “Why are you writing the document? Who is your target audience?” I went on to give a micro-lecture (a bad habit of university lecturers) on writing. You see, when we teach university students to write we heartily emphasize that the purpose and audience of the writing drive the content of the writing.

Are you a Certified Fraud Examiner as well as a CPA? Are you sending a proposal letter for a fraud examination to a new client? Well then, sign the letter with your name, your highest degree, CPA, and then CFE. Put the credential last (the place of honor and emphasis) that highlights your purpose in writing to your target reader.

Swapping hats to my CPA green-eyeshade, my next thought was that it’s time to search the professional literature. Surely in our Code of Professional Conduct and related sea of rules some sentence or two has addressed my colleague’s question. So catching a free five minutes later that week, I logged into my AICPA account and used the search engine feature. Alas, I found no such sentences or rules. What?! A rule we haven’t made? I thought we had rules for everything. Maybe we do, and I was not patient enough to keep searching.

Actually, I am rather hopeful that no hard and fast rule has ever garnered the attention and blessing of any of our authoritative rule-making agencies that loom over our professional accounting lives, because the English teacher in me thinks my answer to my colleague a really good one. Good writers, even CPAs, must know their purpose for writing and their target audience before they begin. To write well, they must let purpose and audience drive and inform their written communication right on to the last items on the page, which usually consist of the writer’s name and all those credentials lined up in a row thereafter.

So until someone out there in the great wide world of professional accounting sends me an e-mail to willisgarycpa@clearwire.net citing book, chapter, and verse of the elusive rule that I did not find, I think we as CPAs should remember our lessons on how to write well. List those credentials in the order that best suits why you are writing the message and to whom you are sending the written message. As for you reader, I am.

Gary Randall Willis
MBA (Accounting), MA (English), CPA

Editor’s Note: Willis taught high school mathematics and chemistry in the mid-70s, earned his MBA and CPA credentials in the late-70s, and worked full-time in the accounting profession until August 2005. With his sons grown and off his payroll (meaning he could take the pay cut), he earned his MA in English in 2004 and returned to teaching full-time, this time in English, at Abilene Christian University. He now teaches high school students such notable works of literature as Shakespeare’s plays, Homer’s epic poem The Odessey, Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit, and Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game.