Art of Accounting: Surprise Staff Leader

Accounting Today

One time I was reviewing a time run and noticed a certain staff tax person, Elliot, kept appearing on clients he wasn’t assigned to and I wondered why. When I asked the people in charge of those clients what Elliot did, I was told that they either needed a tax question answered or some research done and asked him to do it. Elliot was one of the younger people in the tax department. I wondered why they asked him and not the tax manager. I was told that they asked the manager a couple of times and got no response. So they asked Elliot, who got them the answer pretty quickly. This was the reply I received from everyone I asked about using Elliot. This gave me two valuable insights: 1) Elliot was respected by his peers and became their go-to person for tax questions. 2) The tax manager was not responsive to the needs of the accounting staff. It appeared he only gave his attention to what he thought were “important” issues on clients he was directly involved with.