Minding your Ps and Qs and Es

Once upon a time a qualified accountant could make some claim to be an expert in most, though perhaps not in all, aspects of accountancy — even if he was not prepared to go as far as a former Secretary of the Institute who claimed that, following the 1939 – 45 war, the pace of life had changed so much that his afternoons were now all wakeful. The newly qualified accountant has a career expectancy of up to forty years. We may obtain some idea of the minimum extent to which there will be future change over that period of time if we look back even sketchily over the last forty years.