Over the last six fiscal years, Intuit has produced a dramatic increase in the profitability of its accounting professionals business. The segment, whose income comes from the sale of professional tax applications and QuickBooks Accountant and from ProAdvisor income, is not the biggest or the most profitable of the vendor's seven financial reporting segments. Still it has done well because of two factors that Intuit has cited as gains in operating income outstripped revenue growth.

The Progressive Accountant's Bob Scott, Executive Editor, Interviews Fujitsu's Kimberly Hogan, Business Development Manager ScanSnap, from the floor at the 2010 Illinois Accounting & Technology Conference

Accounting doctrine and the accounting profession encroached on the process banks used in making decisions about credit and contributed to the lending crisis, according to Tim Long, senior deputy comptroller for bank supervision policy and chief national bank examiner. In remarks delivered at this week's AICPA National Conference on Banks and Savings Institutions, Long said accounting issues got in the way of judgments that should have been made "by the people best able to speak to the bank's overall credit risk exposure: its senior managers and its credit administration and credit risk professionals, with oversight by its prudential supervisors."