When Does Accountant’s Blog Violate Ethics Code?

When accountants post derogatory and defamatory comments about a client online are they violating professional ethics rules that govern the accounting industry?

The answer should be fairly evident when blogs you post online are potentially damaging to your client’s personal reputation or corporate image and can pose undue harm to their business operations.

Making derogatory comments about clients or prospective clients and posting them online can lead to lawsuits that drag on for years, deplete your cash reserves, rattle the trust of your existing clients and detract  from your ability to run a successful accounting practice; not to mention financial judgments that can result from unfavorable court findings.  All are just some of the risks that accounting professionals face when they express hateful speech online about their clients, employees, independent contractors or about marketing firms they hire to find clients for them.

Internet blogging can become a dangerous proposition for accounting professionals even when they talk about their clients in internet chat rooms as anonymous entities or without mentioning them by name.   The likelihood of a client becoming aware of derogatory comments that you have posted online about them may be more real than imagined.   For example if your blog mentions your client in the context of something that actually happened involving a third-party and that third-party becomes aware of the comments you have posted on an internet bulletin board then there is a good chance your client will also become aware of them too.

But not only can internet blogging land you in court it can also land you in jail. When Virgie Arthur the mother of the late Anna Nicole Smith became the subject of a blog she felt was defamatory she sued the blogger who subsequently landed in jail for contempt of court upon failing to turn over a computer to the judge hearing the case. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/celebrities/6442644.html

What bloggers must realize is when they post something online it becomes public information for everyone to see and not just the person or persons they may want to view their ranting.   An internet blog can memorialize forever what you may be thinking at one particular moment and may regret expressing so publicly only minutes later.  “Imagine if the entire world were privy to every crazy thought that you may have had at one time or another about something or someone which turned out not to be true and you couldn’t take it back afterwards,’ says Johanna Laurent, President of GoodAccountants.com. “Unfortunately there are no redo’s when it comes to comments you post on the Internet,” says Laurent.

Also seen as a form of cyber bullying, some bloggers who attack corporations or other business entities also are coming under the scrutiny of many state and federal courts and are being found liable for comments they make and post on the Internet. “We too recently became the target of a blog which was completely false, that was posted on the Internet by one of the accountants in our network,” says Laurent.   “The accountant was later forced to retract the negative  comments he made about our company and also about the prospective client that did not immediately hire him after a meeting had been arranged only a month earlier by GoodAccountants.com,” she further explains.  ”He also flamed GoodAccountants.com by calling us a scam and encouraged other accountants to contact their State Attorney General’s Office and Consumer Fraud Protection Agencies to lodge complaints against us,” says Laurent.  

“The accountant had already posted his very hateful comments about us on the internet when days later the client we had referred him to and whom he had blogged so negatively about actually called him back and retained his services.   He was forced to eat his words,” says Laurent.  “He never gave us a chance when he rushed to post such negative comments on the Internet about us only thirty days after joining our network.   He met with our client two or three days after he joined our network and then raved about the wonderful client we had found for him only to go ballistics when the client took more time than the accountant may have felt was necessary to make a decision,” explains Laurent.

“I think a lot of this stems from ignorance.   A lot of accountants just do not understand marketing or the marketing process.   You cannot expect to engage a client paying fees of $20,000 or $30,000 annually based on what you may feel should be their timing and then impose some arbitrary time line in which you feel they should have already hired you.    Many of our clients are large corporations who have several layers of management participating in their decision making process which may take some time.” adds Laurent.

“Patience is a virtue that is sometimes scarce among some accounting professionals which is why I always tell my accountants to sit back and let the process work for you instead of working against the process,” advises Laurent.