The term 'creative accounting' always carries the pejorative implication that accepted accounting rules are being manipulated to make trading results over a defined period appear to be better (never worse) than warranted by facts. Perennial rule tightening is like painting the Forth Bridge - the job is never done. Standards, the building blocks of true and fair reporting, remain susceptible to 'creativity' - a term that, in any other field of human activity, would be counted as virtue rather than vice. Will compliance of itself always give a true and fair view? What if the rules themselves are defective, or supposed compliance masks a distortion? In such cases, a good auditor must be prepared to incur management's displeasure by putting a spotlight on the fakery. A clean opinion would merely dissemble truth.
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