Venture capitalist Brad Feld has a blog post called The Accountants Strike Back in which he has a series of observations that begin with "Accounting is the only profession where…" Let’s just say he’s not high on the accounting profession.

I’ll give you some samples below and you tell me if you agree that for most of them you could substitute "law" or "being a member of congress" for "accounting" and still be completely accurate.  To me these "industries" might be the true Axis of Evil:

Accounting is the only profession where you can completely screw
everything up (see Enron, WorldCom, Kmart, etc..) and your “punishment”
(so long as you aren’t Arthur Andersen) is that the “powers that be”
enact all sorts of legislation (SOX, Option Expensing, 409A, FASB 123,
etc.), that create a full employment act for your profession, radically
increase your fee structures, and make everyone in your profession
better off than when everyone thought you were doing a good job and
maintaining the public trust.

Accounting is the only profession that actively tries to get rid of
most of its clients, but at the same time tries to bleed every last
cent out of them on their way to being fired.

Accounting is the only profession that doesn’t care if their processes
negatively impact your business, what your opinion of them is, or
whether or not you are a happy customer.

Accounting in the only profession whereby a new regulation comes down,
a client alert is sent out and not a single client can understand
anything that is on the printed page.