Kayla Nguyen

Ms. Teresa Dempsey

Certified Public Accountant (CPA)

Andre + Associates CPAs

20 November 2019

15:15

Interview Assessment #5

Andre + Associates CPAs is a local firm in McKinney that provides services such as tax

assessing and financial planning. In my fifth interview, I met with Teresa Dempsey, who is the

tax manager of the firm; I learned the importance of gaining accounting experience through

larger accounting firms, though it has its downsides, and assessed the greater significance that

Arthur Andersen had on the future of accounting.

Big firm experience is advantageous when it comes to getting general accounting

experience and helps one to determine their future plans. It is often easier to start working for a

larger entity and then transition to a more localized firm than the alternative. However, the

regimented environment and monitoring of employee hours and output was not desired by

accountants like Ms. Dempsey; the main difference between a large and small firm is that only a

certain percentage of people get promoted in a larger corporations and the rest get let go or

watched for another year, whereas the smaller firms hire to stay. As of now, I think that I would

try starting in a bigger firm in order to gain the knowledge and allow myself to become more

comfortable with the industry. This interview provided a contrast to my previous interview with

Judy Jandera as she particularly likes KPMG and enjoys the large atmosphere whereas I feel Ms.

Dempsey prefers the more localized and isolated environment of the smaller firm she works at.
 In the interview, we also discussed the lack of ethics in the Enron scandal. For everyone

in the accounting community, Enron was ironic because Arthur Andersen acted like the most

prestigious firm; according to Ms. Dempsey, Arthur Andersen employees emphasized that only

the top people would ever get in. Looking back on the incident, Enron compromised their whole

company and messed up their livelihood by cheating. Most firms are anti-cheating as a few extra

dollars are not worth the license one works worked hard for. I found this particularly interesting

as it helped me to look further into the moral issue of business and finance and observe how

people from the outside feel about the Enron scandal.