Who says accountants are boring? Not this Williams student!

April 2, 2014 · 0 Comments

By Brock Weir

Scott Dunlop says his friends might have been just a little bit skeptical when he told them he wanted to become an accountant.

After all, he says, who wants to have a boring desk job just looking at numbers day after day?

For the Grade 12 student at Dr. G.W. Williams Secondary School, accounting was anything but dull number crunching and he has set out to challenge these stereotypes.

“A lot of people think of accounting as just sitting behind a desk day after day, going over numbers, transactions and just recording them,” says Scott. “Accounting has changed a lot since the old days when you would actually have the big ledgers and you would have bookkeepers writing in them. Now it is a lot more analytical. You still have to know how to do that, but you’re now looking more into the numbers, looking at what they mean, and how you can make better decisions for your company.”

To illustrate his point, Scott threw aside the traditional ledgers, picked up a marker and video camera, and hit the whiteboard.

His resulting video was named one of the top three finalists last week in the annual video competition “Rule the Tube”, hosted by Chartered Professional Accountants of Ontario. Through the contest, high school and post-secondary school students were given the chance to get their creative juices flowing “whether it’s Christopher Nolan serious or Will Ferrell funny”, to answer the theme: “Why Chartered Professional Accountants rule the world of business.”

So, why do CPAs rule the world of business?

“CPAs go beyond the balance sheet using information to make decisions and solve problems,” says Scott in his YouTube video, urging viewers to shy away from crazy cat videos and watch something worthwhile. “Being a CPA means you can open doors to things you might have previously thought impossible.”

With a CPA designation, it opens doors for you to work all around the world, provide avenues into varied industries like film, gaming, technology, and transportation, and also develop universally valuable skills, he argues.

“Who says your career has to be all work and no play?”

As Scott makes his points, his hands whizz across the screen, quite literally drawing the viewer into what might be considered the secret life of the CPA. Using this medium, he bucked the trend of simply speaking into a camera, and that was a very deliberate move.

“I have always been interested in cartooning,” he explains. “I haven’t taken any art classes in school, but I have always done little comics on my own and have done comics for our school newspaper. I wanted to make this video engaging because there is nothing worse than watching a boring video with people just talking back and forth. I thought with the drawing style, you are always watching something being created. You are always wondering what is going to come next, and that is something that really helps engage people.”

While engaging people was a top priority, so was busting down those pesky stereotypes that might have made his friends snicker. He was bitten by the accounting bug last year as a Grade 11 student. Before that point, he said he was unsure whether he wanted to follow an academic path of sciences or the arts, but when he sat down in his business course, he found he had a natural aptitude and interest in accounting.

Beyond Grade 12, he has applied for commerce and business programs across Ontario such as at Brock University, Wilfrid Laurier, Western, and Queen’s. So far, he has heard back from Laurier, Brock and Western, gaining entrance into the co-op programs in the latter two schools.

While he waits for word from Queen’s, ruling the Rule the Tube contest is one of his most immediate goals. To win not only the glory, but also $1,500 to use towards his post-secondary education, he needs your help. Every view, like and share of his video on YouTube will take him one step closer to the ultimate prize. The video can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6rUbVexuP4 and voting closes this Friday, April 4.

“I was very excited to make the top three,” he says. “I have never actually won a contest before or been in the finals, so this was pretty big for me. Give the video a look, like it and, if at all possible, share it with anyone you know.”