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."