The financial  vice-president of Perini Corporation received a disturbing call from one of the company’s banks. The bank reported that Perini’s bank account was substantially overdrawn. Perini, a large construction company based near Boston, had never overdrawn any of its bank accounts in over twenty-five years. Shortly thereafter, another of Perini’s banks called and reported that its Perini account was also overdrawn. A review of the recent bank statements, which had been lying around unreconciled for two weeks, revealed canceled checks of more than $1.1 million that had not been recorded.

Perini kept its unused checks in an unlocked room. Perini also kept its supply of coffee cups in the same room, where every clerk and secretary had access ti them. A quick review revealed two missing boxes of checks.

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After long journey to interview some people, for this time our personage is Claire Schulte. She is an audit manager with Deloitte & Touche, currently on a two-year assignment in London. She has been with the firm since 1994, when she graduated from the University of Portland as valedictorian with a double major in accounting and finance.

How did you move from the Portland, Oregon office to the London office of D&T?

By sheer determination. My largest client in Portland was a life insurance company that recently “demutualized,” which means they went from being owned by policyholders to public ownership on the New York Stock Exchange. I let a Deloitte partner in Portland know that I would like an assignment overseas, and at an international conference, he came across a partner in the United Kingdom who was looking for someone with life insurance experience. My purpose here is to work with another insurance company that is undergoing the demutualization process. The office in London is Deloitte’s largest office in the world, and I’m working with clients operating in many different countries.

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For this interview, our personage is Darien Griffin. Just like the other personage, He works at big company too, at S.C. Johnson & Son in Racine, Wisconsin. S.C. Johnson is a leading maker of chemical specialty products for home, persoanl care, and insect control. Mr. Griffin is a 1991 graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and is in the executive MBA program at Marquette University.

How did you decide on accounting as a career?
Well, I liked numbers and I liked business. Originally, I was majoring in Actuarial sciance, but found it to be too focused on math theory.

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