The Going Concern blog, edited by Caleb Newquist, serves its enormous audience among the younger members of the profession with energy and panache, and it has been my privilege to offer some thoughts there from time to time. This week, I contributed this to the vigorously-debated subject of dress codes:
Cosmic issues are being raised in the great Dress Code debates: Is denim okay every day? What’s the largest allowable team logo on a sweatshirt? How about pajamas outside the house?
My experiences may offer some useful historical and cultural context.
In the late 1990s I was expatriated to Paris with one of the then Big Six –- during the first wave of large-firm agita about how far adults in their 20s could be trusted to dress themselves for work.
The professions in London had gone casual with a vengeance. Staff facilities there had promptly taken on the appearance of locker rooms in provincial soccer stadiums: all tattered jerseys and dirty boots.
When my small group of in-house lawyers –- I being the only American –- received the US firm’s memo on acceptable standards for casual Fridays, the walls echoed with hysterical laughter. Five closely-typed pages laid out rules of Talmudic complexity: sleeve lengths and collar requirements and shoe styles; height of hemlines, forbidden fabrics, and a blanket fatwa on all T-shirts.
It was a pronouncement truly lovable only by a profession capable of grappling with GAAP/IFRS reconciliations, CDO portfolio evaluations or the Internal Revenue Code.
My European colleagues, both bemused and horrified, had always been stylishly presentable as a daily matter –- with the subtlety and je ne sais quoi that seems injected into European newborns as part of their government-provided health care. At any given time, however -– men and women alike -- at least half would have been in violation of the American code –- perhaps a designer blouse without sleeves, a collarless Armani tee under a two-piece suit, or marginally too much display of femur or collarbone.
As enforcer, I’d have had full-out rebellion on my hands, not least from our paralegals -– a long-stemmed trio averaging about 1.80 metres each, who would have sooner joined Marianne in storming the barricades than surrender the bare legs and open-toed sandals of Paris in the springtime.
For the rest of the piece, see Going Concern for February 18, 2016.
To the youthful audience of Going Concern, my plug for my recently-published book on the difficult state of the large firms -- "Count Down: The Past, Present and Uncertain Future of the Big Four Accounting Firms" -- emphasized that while it is a "business" book and not a text, its publisher follows the academic model, so the cover price might seem somewhat lofty -- for which my subversive suggestion was that engagement teams should pool their interest, charge a copy to the job as research material, and pass it around. Reader demographics here should make pricing less an issue -- availability is through Amazon. Feedback and reactions are solicited and encouraged -- here at the Main page.