Let's begin the year with some common sense career tips

As business educators, we focus our time on course content. What about the other important aspects that do not fit nicely under any curriculum? Such things as leadership, communication, common sense if you may.

What common sense - why this is implied, right?

Wrong - common sense seems to have taken a back seat to technology - our answer to everything.

Here are seven common sense career tips that we do not teach you in the classroom:

1. Take risks that are calculated, not crazy.
2. The worst-case scenario is rarely as bad as you think.
3. Don’t personalize things that aren’t personal.
4. It’s best in the long run to make yourself a grudge-free zone.
5. Be generous with praise and careful with criticism.
6. Know the rules, so you know which ones to break.
7. It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission.

I really like rule 3 – “don’t personalize things that aren’t personal.” How true. Many people are quite narcissistic. They think that every thing that happens – positive and negative – in their lives is somehow a direct result of someone acting in a manner that is designed to either help or hurt them.

Teaching Tigers - Can Ethics Be Taught?

This is a difficult question.

Some people suggest that under capitalism, profits and greed are the major motivating factors. Therefore, ethics cannot be taught but are part of one's personality or culture.

Others suggest that ethics can be taught.

I am somewhat in the middle of the road. I do think it is possible that we can each business ethics indirectly through case studies and the introduction of various ethical frameworks.

So how do you define ethical business behaviour?

There is an excellent quote by Potter Stewart, a former Supreme Court Justice, defining ethics:

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.

Pay particular attention to the second part of this quote, the fact that ethical business behaviour is doing what is right to do which often takes you beyond what you have the legal right to do.

So when you get into ethical business ethics it is really just pure ethical behaviour, however business tends to put a frame around it.

Do ethics go beyond legal requirements?

Well, that when it becomes problematic - it now becomes subjective. Laws give predictability and supposed fairness - a minimum standard code is specified. However, is the law and the right thing to do identical? Well if they were identical you would not need ethics - you would just need laws.

When you get into the second question, what is the right thing to do, it really becomes a matter of judgment (subjectivity) as different societies reach different judgments. For example in Thailand, nepotism is both honourable and an accepted business practice, however other countries think nepotism is neither. That is the dilemma: different societies differ on what is the right thing to do.

Beyond the debate if it is possible to teach ethics or even the debate of defining ethics, I do believe that ethics has a place in formal business education, and as such we will weave ethics throughout our course material.

Why do we need accounting?

Asking that question of an accountant is like asking a farmer why we need rain.

The more important question is why do you think we need accounting?

I want to you to think about your everyday uses of accounting - using a debit card, arranging your student loan, getting paid for your work, paying your cell phone bill, using Pay Pal, selling something on EBay, subscribing to a magazine, buying your lunch, leasing a car, purchasing a song from iTunes. The commonality of these transactions is that every transaction requires some form of accounting.

So really, you already know a lot about accounting - you use it every day.

So, why is accounting important to you? Well, without accounting many of the transactions you complete everyday would become very difficult - for example, if we went back to the barter system, " to trade or exchange of goods or services without using money" we would most likely need a third party intermediary to oversee the barter transactions - just to instill a sense of fairness of trade for both parties. Unlike Peter Minuet deal in which $24 worth of beads, knives and kettles for Manhattan Island - we clearly note that Peter got the benefit of the bargain on that transaction!

Would you want to constantly be bartering for your everyday transactions - dragging your parcel of beads or whatever your trade is to Tim Horton's for your daily large double double? Doubtful - much easier to fork over a buck thirty-five in coins. The lack of transferability of bartering for goods, as you can see, is tiring, confusing and inefficient and never mind thinking how long the drive-Thu line would become As you see, your everyday commerce transactions would take a different spin without a common form of currency - money .

See this article on what is money - http://www.investopedia.com/articles/basics/03/061303.asp

Accounting is the backbone of the business financial world. We need accounting because it is the only way for the business to grow and flourish - just like the daisy!

Accounting dates back to medieval times - Italy is the location of our first recorded source of accounting entries, and the first published accounting work was in 1494 by a Venetian monk. Old eh?

Another interesting fact is that the knowledge and principles upon which the first accounting practices were established, have changed very little in many hundreds of years accounting has been in use. The concept of assets, liabilities and income and the need to reconcile these areas is still the basis for all accounting functions today.

As we begin this accounting course, do not lose sight that you are already pretty experienced with many accounting transactions - we might start to formalize some of the transactions in this course.

Many of you have already crunched your own budget numbers for this coming school year, and as in business some are better than others at budgets, so salute those that will not be eating Kraft Dinner come March!

Your Professor of Accounting

Dianne Davis