Depending on whether I was the auditor or the to-be-audited, I had one of two prints hanging on my office wall wherever I went: Kipling's poem "I Keep Six Honest Serving Men" or M.C. Escher's lithography "Klimmen en dalen".
Instead of being one of those identically dressed men who keep climbing a never-ending staircase without getting any higher - or, for that matter, anywhere at all - I've always felt better being that lonesome, hooded man standing on the floor below and watching their Sisyphean climb.
Which may account for the fact that I was never much of a died-in-the-wool accountant - see here - but more the trouble-shooting fixer-upper who set up new accounting systems, sorted out the ones that didn't work, and pulled back from financial oblivion businesses which either had never had an accounting system or one that had never worked.
It was a lonely job and I was never welcomed with open arms because my arrival made others feel insecure; in fact, if I was still liked when I had done my job, I instinctively knew I had not killed all the sacred cows that needed to be killed and had not cut all the toes that needed to be cut, and so I went back in again and cut and killed some more.
Both prints are still hanging on the wall in my library, and I still argue the toss about lots of things that are wrong with this world but you're safe as I do it out of earshot from anyone in the privacy of my library.
