My Teaching Style

Tomorrow night my Auditing Concepts summer school course at Fairleigh Dickinson University starts. I always look forward to welcoming a new class of strangers who become quite familiar as the course proceeds.

I try to make the learning experience as pleasurable as possible while transferring to them what they need to know and providing a process where they can fully understand it and see how it fits into the whole picture of providing value to clients and the overall functioning of commerce and the economy.

The students are presented with a thorough syllabus with the typical rules, learning objectives, what is expected of them, added material, grading criteria and a course outline with weekly reading assignments. I usually assign homework as soon as a class session ends. I also record the lectures so students who cannot attend can be kept current.

The sessions begin with responding to any questions students have about that week’s reading and homework assignments followed by a brief review by me of the assignment. Next, I discuss news items that specifically relate to the current or previous week’s reading assignments. This is to teach them the material in a less pedagogical manner as well as indicate that what they are learning has real-world relevance, is current and not just something that students are compelled to learn. I always make sure to relate the news to the textbook reading assignments. I have been doing this since I started teaching and it seems to work quite well and gets active buy-in from the students.

An example of this is when Silicon Valley Bank failed, and I was able to “teach” the real meaning and application of Fair Value accounting, which is usually a hard concept for students and, as I have shown, even for experienced auditors to understand. I also made this into a webinar that was presented to over 5,000 accountants in two presentations in April 2023 for CPAacademy.org. Another time in a financial analysis MBA course, the Nobel Prize was awarded for corporate financial theories, which was that week’s topic. I spent the entire session using The Wall Street Journal’s article about that. I have many other instances, but this should give you a good idea of what I do and its value in creating real-world relevance.

That discussion usually takes about an hour. I also distribute copies of the articles I use in those discussions. I then go over that week’s reading assignment. However, I tell the students to not read the textbook chapters until after the lecture. That way they can skip material I tell them they do not need to know. They might need to know about the existence of that material, but not anything in detail so it is not necessary for them to spend the time reading and learning it. The reason for this is that some things are highly specialized, and many firms have staff or groups dedicated to knowing that inside and outside, and there is no need for staff not specializing in that to know it thoroughly, other than being able to recognize when an expert needs to be consulted.

I then provide a 10-minute break which is usually after 1 hour and 50 minutes. When we come back, I usually present a discussion of something peripheral to the course curriculum, but which I think is important to know about. For this auditing course, this will include financial statement myths, market cap compared to book value with a discussion of the huge differences in those two values, the importance of the reported earnings, selected financial statement analysis of some misunderstood items, effective use of trend analysis, the application of materiality in the real world, fully understanding the structure of financial statements, many discussions of the notes to financial statements and ways to spot and avoid flaws and misuses of these notes, the differences in the major stock indexes and how businesses can be purchases using the assets of the business as collateral to obtain loans to pay for the business. There are other discussions and what I cover will be determined by the interest expressed by the students, keeping in mind that each discussion will directly relate to the course curriculum.

The last half hour to 40 minutes is a further review of that week’s subject matter that I previously covered during that second hour with added highlighting and illustrations.

For class participation and real-world relevance, each student is required to select a public company’s 10-K where class discussions will be based on material in that report. Each student will have a different company’s report and the similarities and differences will be pointed out and discussed. Auditing and financial statement preparation are real things essential to the proper functioning of capital markets, lending and credit and the students will get a keen understanding of the importance of the course material. Also, I enjoy doing it this way and find that it elicits lively conversations from the students.

I really like teaching and appreciate the opportunity and privilege of being able to instill my knowledge, experience, and love of accounting and what we do in students considering public accounting as their career.

Comment: My Memoirs as a CPA book has been published and is available in Kindle and print editions on Amazon. Buy it, read it and enjoy it!