CPA Practice Advisor - 26

THE MILLENNIAL ADVISOR

How Pressure Can Strengthen or
Weaken an Accounting Firm
PRESSURE, AS IT goes in the song by Queen: "Pressure, pushing down on me, pressing
down on you..."
Just as Freddie Mercury's popular refrain sticks in your head, both
good and bad pressures get inside
every organization. Those pressures
can push people to do the right thing
faster and better, or press people
and organizations into making bad
decisions.
The ultimate question is, inside
your organization, is pressure pushing people to excel or crumble? Or
has pressure's character led your
people toward negative, even unethical behaviors?

PRESSURE
The best study of negative pressure's
impacts was done in the 1950s by
Solomon Asch. Asch tested the
effects of group pressure: 75% of
the subjects knowingly went along
with obviously wrong answers to a
simple question - demonstrating
group pressure at work. Asch's study
tasked participants to say which of
three lines was the longest. The test
subjects were asked second to last
which of the three lines was the
longest. The plants, everyone in the
group aside from the test subject,
would advocate to the group that
the longest line was in fact the
shortest. 75% of the time, the subject
went along with the group's wrong
answer.
When asked about this afterward, the subjects consistently
replied, "I did not want to go against
the group."
If a group of random strangers
can exert this type of pressure
on others, what type of pressure
does your organization exert? If
you combine the normal power of

26

OCTOBER 2019 ■

GARRETT WAGNER, CPA

group dynamics with the additional
pressure of the authority of a boss,
you can easily begin to see the unintended effects of pressure, pushing
people in the wrong direction.
Organizations of all sizes have
gotten into major trouble when the
pressure goes the wrong way and
promotes and even encourages
unethical behavior. Remember
Enron?
If unspoken pressure can lead
to unethical and negative behavior,
let's understand what behaviors create pressure, both good and bad, and
take intentional steps each day to
make sure the pressure is going in
the right direction.
No matter your title, your
behaviors contribute to the group
dynamics where you work. Do you
show up on time to work, on time
for meetings, and do you text during
meetings? What does this tell others
about the culture or your image as
being "above the law"? Are you creating more bad pressure each day?

Then, there are the clearly big
things: how do you treat your coworkers when times are tough? Do
you do the right thing, even if no
one seems to be looking and it is not
the path of least resistance? These
decisions get projected into the collective, and gaps and disparities in
values inflate the pressure, positive
and negative.

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PRESSURE'S SLIPPERY
SLOPE
If we apply a standard bell curve to
this concept of pressure, once we
move past the 50% threshold for
good vs. bad pressure, we quickly
drop off and fall further down the
curve. This is where the power of
group dynamics really comes into
play.
If your organization lets those
little and big decisions go the
wrong way more than 50% of the
time, doing the wrong thing is an
everyday thing. Enron didn't decide
one day to perpetuate a massive
fraud. Top-down, they fostered the
wrong pressures onto their people,
until group dynamics took over, and
the rest is history.
How can we take intentional
steps to foster the right type of
pressure and demonstrate what is
right versus what is expedient or
easy to others?
The first step starts with those
at the top of the organization. If the
partners or executives inside
an organization are not committed to "good" pressure, all
is lost. As a leader you need to
say the right things, as hard
or tiring as it seems-because
you set the tone for everyone
else. Consistent demonstration of
the right pressures-and the right
behaviors under pressure-make an
indelible, lasting imprint.
The second step is to recognize
when those in the group take the
correct actions when faced with
tough decisions. Did someone make
the correct and accurate accounting
entry, even though it may mean

CEO/Founder, C3 Evolution Group
garrett.wagner@cpapracticeadvisor.com

missing a client's expectation? Or
were they encouraged to "plug"
the number? Hopefully, everyone
reading this expects those they
work with to record the correct entry
each time. What we see in fraud and
ethics issues are good employees
succumbing to pressures that lead
everyone down the wrong path.
Finally, when those at the top
embody the right tone, and group
members make the right decisions,
the final step is acknowledging
people when they do the right thing.

GRACE UNDER
PRESSURE
This isn't about rewarding people
for just doing their jobs. You are
re-enforcing the right behavior by
publicly drawing a clear line in the
sand through leadership by.
The research on group dynamics shows time and time again that
people feel pressure to conform to
the group - even when conformity
means going with the flow of things
that are obviously off-kilter. To
ensure the success of our organizations, we need to apply leadership by
example when pressure is coming
down on our people-to keep us on
the other side of the Dark Side of
the Force.
What do your actions show
each day? Are you applying pressure encouraging those around
you to make the right or wrong
decision, making your own choice
and impacting the group in the right
way? ■
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CPA Practice Advisor

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