Cooking book becomes a must for listed companies?

Perhaps book cooking technique will become part of CEO's talent.

This news, "Dell to Restate Earns, Misled Auditors", may represent many similar cases. Of course, this reminds us about other frauds like Enron.

If this becomes a common practice for listed companies, all investors will lose confidence and the financial markets would be hard to survive.

Audited financial reports are the only way for all to know the situation of these corporations. If management can cook anyway they needed, say to meet market expectation or to hide anything, then investment would be worse than gambling.

For my accounting experience, it is fortunate for me to work in a branch of international company that my CEOs did not have the authority to order me to cook anything. My work was based on the accounting principles and documentation controls set by the head office.

As I have mentioned before, accountants have no way to oppose when their CEOs asked them to cook the books. The only way is to resign, but that means the end of one's career. It is very hard to choose. In other words, accounting career is not a good choice anymore today.

Is there any solution to the present situations? Unless there is some laws to enforce, I do afraid that such frauds will be a common things for the future. Any CEOs would try their best to cook the book to keep their position and hope that a better future might save them.