Interview Summary/Sources

The person that I interviewed for this paper was Jen Tigges.  I am writing my paper about accounting and she is a CPA.  She currently works at Principal Financial Group as an Assistant Financial Controller.  According to Jen writing plays a major role in the field of accounting.  She estimates that she spends around fifty percent of her day doing some form of writing.  The most common form of writing that she does is non academic and it pertains to writing emails and memos.  Also, accountants also have to write a variety of reports which she outlined for me.  The main reports that she fills out are the 10Q and the 10K, and these reports have to be filed with the SEC.  The main role that her writing serves is explaining complex accounting principles to people that do not have experience in the accounting field.  She also has to work with international business people and has to be able for them to understand her writing even though they speak English as a second language.  Although Jen does not write in academic contexts very often, writing still plays an important role in her job.  From this interview it seems to me that accountants spend a lot of their time writing for people who may not understand the technicalities associated with accounting. In other words, the audience most typically associated with accounting would  be other business people who do not have an accounting background.  Accountants also spend a lot of their time writing emails and memos to their coworkers.  Therefore, the media generally used in the accounting profession is electronic.  Another source of writing that accountants typically do is filing various reports and documenting specific information with the SEC and the IRS.  The genre typically associated with writing in accounting would be informational.  It is important for them to explain various accounting principles and relay specific numbers vital to the company.

http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/bsi/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=eaef7287-b29f-4864-9219-acbe8df4ae5e%40sessionmgr111&vid=0&hid=105
http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/abiglobal/docview/893907805/7A8EAA77A020407APQ/1?accountid=14663http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/bsi/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=c09bf3e8-fc5a-4ddf-ad17-7123daf88810%40sessionmgr110&vid=20&hid=105
Listed above are the three academic sources that I plan to use for my paper.  Based on these articles I think that the general purpose of writing in the accounting field is to analyze various issues in the accounting world.  In these articles the main issues that are analyzed are tax competition, the value of a new accounting practice that was put in place, and the efficiency of a specific auditing form that is used.  For all three of these sources the main audience is accountants.  The purpose behind these three reports would be to inform the accounting community of various types of issues and problems that they may run into and how to analyze them.  Another purpose would be to analyze the way taxes can affect different kinds of people.  They also analyze how specific accounting principles or forms can help or hinder the efficiency of accountants in the workplace.  The genre that these three sources employ would be informational.  Their goal is to inform the accounting community of the best practices that they should use.  The stance used in these sources is one that would be objective, and also informational.  The media that these three sources employ is a print source.  From these sources I can gather that writing in accounting is very important.  In academic fields writing in accounting evaluates certain practices that have the possibility of being used by all accountants and assesses whether or not that could work.