Saving CUPS Part 2: Explaining Contra Accounts to CPA's

One of the most difficult aspects of consulting is that people often don't want advice; they want advocacy. Certainly, consultants can never ethically accept jobs that require advocacy over sound operation. That is the function of marketing departments.

The state had imposed an accounting principle known as "lower of cost or market" (LOCOM) because of the nature of the problem the credit unions had created. Though Bert would have preferred me to figure out a way that LOCOM accounting was unreasonable, he accepted the fact that there was nothing we could do about it.