Our Firm
Lewis & Knopf, CPAs, P.C. is a full service accounting and consulting firm serving entrepreneurial clients interested in furthering their financial well-being by creating strategies designed to increase their net worth. Our mission illustrates our methodologies and explains the critical relationship between sound business, personal financial success, and security for your family.
We take a big picture approach to our engagements. We begin by identifying the key drivers that impact your ability to achieve your personal financial goals and objectives. Generally, we find that in the absence of significant inheritance or a winning lottery ticket, the key driver in the financial well-being of most entrepreneurs is the ultimate success (or failure) of their business. And we’ve seen that the key to maintaining one’s healthy financial position is a combination of sound planning and wise choices.
A Good Certified Public Accountant
In 1953, one of our founding members wrote a letter outlining the characteristics of a "good Certified Public Accountant." Since this letter was drafted, we have integrated his thoughts into our everyday vision for quality. Read the letter »
September 10, 1953
Dear Folks:
I have been asked so many times what is expected of a Certified Public Accountant that I would like to pass on to you the impressions left to me through a lifetime practice in the profession. These represent my ideals, which I have never reached, but am still trying.
By what yardstick does one measure a Certified Public Accountant—more particularly a good Certified Public Accountant.
It isn’t easy to decide on a set of specifications for what makes a good Certified Public Accountant, the self-reliant, indestructible individual of Emerson’s thinking.
It is fairly easy to describe a good Certified Public Accountant negatively as one who is free from ignorance, egotism, and prejudice. It is more difficult to describe him in positive terms. But I should like to suggest that he is distinguished by five characteristics.
First, he is critical in his approach to any problem. He analyzes his own preconceived opinions and his own bias. He weighs the evidence, analyzes alternatives, and chooses the means most likely to bring about the desired result. He approaches each problem with an open mind, and tests his conclusions against the facts. He is aware that no result is final and is ready and willing to change his mind in the light of new evidence.
Second, a good Certified Public Account is characterized by humility—the ability to subordinate his own desires in order to encourage the best thinking and efforts of his associates, subordinates, and clients. Although he is the planner, the supervisor, and the maker of decisions, he multiplies himself; loyalty, enthusiasm, incentive, and cooperation he instills and encourages in others.
If a Certified Public Accountant is to reach top professional levels, he must have a third quality, a broad view of his profession—a width of scope, vision, and perspective. It is obvious that a Certified Public Accountant cannot know everything, but he must know a little bit about everything, and he must manage to achieve an understanding of the methods and objectives of the major fields of applicable knowledge. He must learn to orient himself in a wide sphere of interest; he must know how to extend the horizons of his competence in any direction that becomes necessary. In meeting whatever problems he is called upon to solve, he must be able to analyze and comprehend the connection among all of its related aspects.
Fourth, he possesses high standards of value. Like all vocationally trained men, he has, of course, standards of sound workmanship and honest performance. But there are other standards than those of workmanship and performance, and, here again, the good certified Public Accountant has a motivation, a driving sense of purpose, to employ to their utmost usefulness the powers of character and integrity which he possesses.
Finally and most important of all, the good Certified Public Accountant is characterized by judgment—the capacity for making right decisions most of the time. Indeed, without judgment he is a threat to associates, clients, and his profession alike. The Certified Public Accountant who possesses judgment in generous measure is the Certified Public Accountant who will inevitably forge to the top. He is truly “self-reliant and indestructible”. He is a successful American Business Man of today.
If even a small percentage of Certified Public Accountants meet these specifications, the future of the profession is indeed in good hands.
Very truly yours,
J. Clyde Lewis
Certified Public Accountant
Lyle S. Knopf
A. Keith Kerr
Jane Urich
Bill Morgan
Wm. Sheets
Jack Millhouse
Gertrude Klyer
