Is accounting sexy?

CIMA, Financial Management, Oct 2004.

A few months ago, I was at a workshop which consisted of publishers/editors and accounting academics. I was a bit late and when I arrived one of the editors asked me to introduce myself as follows ” tell us a little bit about yourself, where you are from and what makes accounting sexy?” First two questions, no problem. The last one, well thankfully I am a CIMA member and remember the series of adverts in 2004 from their Financial Management magazine. The ads (see the picture to the left) were for accounting software and featured a dominatrix and the caption “is your procurement strict enough”. I loved that ad! In one foul swoop it got rid of the dull and boring stereotype of accountants. Of course, some CIMA members did not like it at all and wrote to the editors. This complaining perpetuated the dull image of accountant and inspired a further article entitled “Miss Backlash” – see here.

So now for a completely unscientific experiment – I show just a few examples by the way

1. If I Google “is accounting sexy”, I get a good few interesting results:

A blog, accountantsaresexy.com – a bit dated

A blog post with the title The Surprisingly Sexy Chart of Accounts

A you tube video, JustThrive Makes Accounting Sexy – YouTube

2. If I google “sexy accounting”, I get some similar results to #1

I also get some pretty dodgy stuff.

3. If I google “sexy accountant”

The results are getting to beyond a PG rating! But a quick glance at the image search result throws up this ! You can decide for yourself on the sexiness (or otherwise).

So is accounting sexy? I don’t know to be honest, but I hope this short reflection puts a smile on your face. Now back to those ledgers……

(If you want to know more on the images of accountants, check out the work of Baldvinsdottir et al)