The importance of a liberal education to the tax professional.

The Importance of a Liberal Education to the Tax Professional

Just what does it take to be a tax professional? Certainly, knowledge of tax rules and principles sufficient to meet compliance demands are essential. At a more advanced level, the understanding of the tax law and experience necessary to engage in effective tax planning are also required. Such expertise--to a greater or lesser degree--is indisputably essential in the tax field. The foregoing exhortation suggests that, although professional training and experience are necessary to achieving competency in a chosen profession, they alone are insufficient.

Most tax professionals would agree. Traits of a more general nature--many products of a liberal education--may also be considered significant. Good judgment, creativity, and the ability to work with people (variously called interpersonal or interactive skills), along with numerous other qualifications, would be on most tax professionals' lists of desirable traits. How are such traits to be acquired? Where are they to be found? If the days of formal schooling be many years in the past, is it too late to acquire and nurture them?

The premise of this article is essentially the same as that expressed by John Stuart Mill, the great English philosopher, in the excerpt quoted above from his address upon election as a rector of St. Andrews University in 1867: a general, liberal education, begun in school and continued throughout life, will lead to a more successful and rewarding professional career. The tax professional is peppered daily with offers to enhance technical knowledge and skills through reading, seminars, and professional meetings. When it comes to general education, however, we must all be autodidacts--that is, self-taught. This article will not show you how to acquire a general education; that is not its intent. Rather, it is intended to convince you of the importance of such an education and inspire you to continue its pursuit.

The Barbarism of Specialization

The above heading is taken from a chapter of a masterly essay on life in the Twentieth Century that has particular relevance for the modern tax professional. I know of no better way of explaining its use here than to quote from that essay.

[The scientist who] is only acquainted with one science, and even of that one only knows the small corner in which he is an active investigator . . . even proclaims it as a virtue that he takes no cognizance of what lies outside the narrow territory specially cultivated by himself, and gives the name of "dilettantism" to any curiosity for the general scheme of knowledge. (2)

The author of the foregoing quotation, Peter Drucker, returned on other occasions to note and deplore collateral effects of the peculiar modern phenomenon of professional specialization. The citizen, he has said, is the new barbarian and this new barbarian is above all the professional--the engineer, the physician, the lawyer, the scientist--more learned than ever before, but at the same time more uncultured. The consequences of the phenomenon--to the professions and to the world--are incalculable.

After a few years' experience in the field, most tax professionals come to understand that which they may have only superficially acknowledged at the outset of their careers: formal training begins, but does not complete, the specialized education of the professional. No schooling prepares one for all the demands of modern professional practice. (3) Corporate tax departments and law and accounting firms generally recognize the deficiencies of new personnel and have institutionalized programs offering a carefully balanced mixture of continuing professional education and work experience designed to overcome those deficiences. The new professional receives constant encouragement and support with regard to continuing professional education, but receives not the slightest encouragement to continue general intellectual development beyond the stage of adolescence. Employers may deplore, but do nothing to remedy, the situation. A byproduct of employers' emphasis on professional development, to the virtual exclusion of overall intellectual development, is inevitably another victim of the barbarism of specialization.

The educational establishment in the United States also does little to remedy the defects of the professional's education. Most of us are products of the "electives" system that prevails at most colleges and universities. (4) The electives are, in large part, specialized courses taught by specialists attempting to make proselytes for their narrow view of the world. Students proceed through the system, in the words of one commentator, as--

Window shoppers in the marketplace of ideas, tourists in the world of thought who know the names of everything and the significance of nothing, their transcripts read like little black books. Wooed by experts, seduced by specialists. . . . (5)

Likewise, premature specialization offers many off-ramps from the road to a sound general education. College undergraduates often begin taking courses in their chosen "majors"--business, accounting, economics--as early as their freshman year. This is the educational equivalent of attempting to build the superstructure and foundation of a building simultaneously. As a result, the ranks of the new barbarians grow.

The Liberal Arts 

A recent survey concluded, somewhat charitably, that tax executives from large corporations believe there is room for improvement in the skills of their staffs in the areas of written and oral communication, problem solving, and similar abilities. (6) These skills are not directly addressed during the course of professional training and are only indifferently taught in the public schools and institutions of higher learning. Although the survey did not inquire whether the tax executives were surprised with the generally poor level of development of these skills, a negative response to such a question could have been expected.

So Linowitz, noted lawyer and former ambassador, recently delivered an address at the Cornell Law School in which he described the typical large law firm and young lawyer to be found in it today. (7) Something seriously disturbing has been happening to the legal profession, he said. Big firms have become "dehumanized." Young lawyers enter the profession schooled in the income-producing arts such as economics and statistics but have no grounding in literature, human behavior, and the like. According to Mr. Linowitz, "You can often learn more about people from great novels than you can from studying the law books." Mr. Linowitz's criticism of the defects of young lawyers' education undoubtedly is equally true in every other profession.

The chaos and utter lack of structure that mark most higher education in the United States today, with the twin evils of the electives system and premature specialization, and of relatively recent origin. Before 1900, it was generally accepted that certain subjects were more important than others, that certain subjects ought to be in the possession of every educated person, and that education in those subjects should precede vocational training. In other words, that all educated people, regardless of their chosen "trade," should be exposed to, and have an understanding of, a common set of general educational "stimuli." Today, the prevalent view seems to be that it does not much matter what one learns so long as one learns something. (8)

In the great medieval universities of Europe, the student's general education began with extended instruction in the seven liberal arts:

* the trivium, comprised of grammar, rhetoric, and logic; and

* the quadrivium, comprised of arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music.

The goals of the trivium were the correct, precise, and effective use of language and, with the addition of logic, the refinement of the mental faculties. The modern counterparts are oral and written communication and the skills of persuasion. The quadrivium had as its objective the development of mathematical skills.

Together, the trivium and quadrivium constituted the foundation for future education, the sine qua non to all higher study such as philosophy and theology. The product of this system was an individual grounded in all those skills prerequisite to the acquisition of a general education.

Admittedly, such a rigid system is inappropriate for today. But at no time prior to this century was it thought that vocational training should occur prior to, or contemporaneous with, genral education. Indeed, there was near universal agreement that a sound general education was the goal of every student regardless of his trade or profession. With only few exceptions, higher education's abandonment of its traditional role has left graduates culturally impoverished and ill-equipped to deal with the highest demands of their professions and their country.

The remainder of this article will explain how the fruits of a liberal education may benefit the tax professional. Two examples have been selected to show how the tax executive will be a better specialist by virtue of having a sound general education. For the benefit of those readers who wish to enhance their own learning, a suggested reading list is set forth.

The Skills of Persuasion

How much of the typical tax professional's workday is spend engaged in efforts to persuade someone to do or to refrain from doing something? The opportunities are almost endless: meetings with IRS Appeals Officers with a view of obtaining acquiescence as to a return position, explanations to a division general manager of why certain selling practices should be changed, appeals to controllers for more accurate and timely information, asking the boss for a raise. All of these instances are examples of oral communication intended to persuade the listener and achieve some desired result.

The shelves in the business section of bookstores sag under the weight of books written as explanations of the art and science of persuasive speech. Titles such as How to Negotiate Successfully in Real Estate, Secrets of the Master Sellers, Closing the Sale, and Get That Raise enjoy brief popularity before sinking into, in most cases, deserved obscurity. Most books of this type, surviving only a few weeks or months at best, share some common traits (in addition to high price). They suggest, implicitly or expressly that persuasive speech in one area (e.g., real estate salese is fundamentally different from persuasive speech in others (e.g., negotiating with the IRS). They offer a plethora of vague prescriptions such as this statement from a recent book on how to be persuasive in everything "from business to love":

A negotiator should maintain a flexible attitude throughout the meeting by questioning his tactics in a disciplined manner.

These "how to" books also assume that the alpha ad omega of persuasive spech are to be found in modern clinical and applied psychology. And they imply that everything worth knowing about persuasive speech must have its origin in modern times. Indeed, not infrequently, do the books' extensive bibliographies contain few, if any, references to sources more than ten years old!

The previous section explained how rhetoric, one of the seven liberal arts of medieval times, deals with the power to move others to act or not act in some way. In our own time, the term "rhetoric" has acquired a pejorative connotation. Such was not always the case. The purpose and scope of rhetoric have been the subject of commentary and analysis for more than 20 centuries.

Nearly everything that could be said about it was said by the end of the classical Greek period. The best work ever written concerning how to persuade anybody to do anything is Aristotle's lengthy treatise, Rhetoric, written in the third century B.C. This timeless masterpiece contains more relevant and useful information than does the collected wisdom of all the vacuous modern "how to" books that clutter library shelves.

Aristotle says that there are three essential elements to persuasive speech.

* First, there is the need to evince the speaker's personal character, or ethos, in a way which will make his speech credible.

* Second, the speaker must stir the emotions of the listener in a favorable mannerf this s known as evoking pathos.

* Finally, the speaker must prove the truth of his premise by resort to persuasive argument; this is known as appealing to reason, or logos.

Of the three kinds of rhetoric identified by Aristotle--political, epideictic, and forensic--the latter is the one most familiar to tax professionals. Forensic rhetoric is that associated with the law-accusation and defense, justice and injustice, etc. As such, it is primarily, though not exclusively, aimed at past events.

The most common error generally committed by tax professionals attempting to affect another person's decisions and actions flows from the apparent belief that it is sufficient to make onehs argument demonstrative and worthy of belief--that is, by making appals solely to logos. Aristotle says this approach is not enough and is likely to end in failure. The speaker must also make his ow character look right (ethos) and put the listener into the right frame of mind (pathos). (9)

With respect to ethos Aristotle says that there are three things that inspire confidence in the speaker's own character. They tend to induce the listener to believe a thing apart from any proof of it. First, the speaker must exhibit good sense. By this, Aristotle appears to mean the ability to demonstrate knowledge of the matter under discussion. Second, the speaker mush exhibit good moral character. In this context, Aristotle is referring to the trait of trustworthiness or honesty. Coverng up or distorting facts, making inflated claims, or making empty threats, over time, will undermine this essential element. Finally, the speaker must demonstrate goodwill or friendliness of disposition. A "take no prisoners" approach is likely to elicit the sae reaction as that resulting from the Allies' indiscriminate carpet bombing in the Second World War--a strengthening of the will to resist and an enhanced sense of opposition. As Aristotle says, if listeners feel friendly to the one coming before them for judgment, they regard him as having done little wrong, if any.

With respect to pathos, Aristotle says that when people are feeling friendly and placable, they think of one sort of thing; when they are feeling angry or hostile, they think either something totally different or the same thing with a different intensity. They emotions function as an initiator in the direction desired by the speaker. Understanding the critical role of the emotions in persuasive speech is, in part, why Mr. Linowitz said that it is important that one understand that one may learn more about human behavior from imaginative literature than from judicial decisions.

The literature of the West has dealt with human behavior in two basic ways. On the one hand are the philosophical and scientific treatises, from Aristotle to Freud and the moder psychoanalysts. On the other hand are works of imaginative literature--novels, plays, poetry, history, and biography. n our own day, the study of human behavior has become, unfortunately, almost the exclusive province of the psychologists. In earlier times, however, much of value was written by philosophers, biographers, and dramatic poets. Such writings are of value when addressing the element of pathos in persuasive speech.

As with ethos and pathos, appeals to logos--or reason--have their own rules. Paraount among them is the principle that one should not initiate such appeals until the element of ethos has been established and the element of pathos at least introduced. Thus, the three elements of persuasive speech have not only their own internal rules but also rules for applying the elements with respect to each other. Possibly the best known example of the successful use of the three elements is Marc Antony's funeral oration in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. An example of political rhetoric, it still has much to teach the individual engaged in forensic rhetoric.

Rhetorc is filled with much practical guidance, making it endlessly rereadable, unlike modern writings on the subject. It shows how to argue by example and maxim. It provides rules for the refutation of the listener's objections. It offers sensible guidance about style, such as when to avoid strange workds, how to use similes, how to pick the right tone, how and when to use humor, and much, much more. rhetoric exits, Aristotle says, to affect the making of decisions. Its improtance has caused the formulation of many rules for its effective use. A systematic study of those rules is not to be had in the course of professional training. Rather, they are properly a part of every professional's liberal education.

Management Skills

Most tax professionals aspire to management responsibility, at least within the tax department. Unfortunately, many are ill-prepared, by training and temperament, for it. The transition from managing things to managing people is never easy, if it is ever successfully accomplished at all. The former professional, suddenly thrust into the role of manager of a group of independent-minded professionals, has the most difficult job of all. (10)

Organization management, in its current form, is of recent origin. (11) It has generated books and articles by the trainload, each one by a self-proclaimed expert offering some purported original insight that will give that competitive edge. A very few offer knowledge and useful information. The works of Peter Drucker are good examples. Most, however, are of modest if any value.

Although modern organization management may be in its infancy, the wisdom of over 2,500 years of managing people and tasks is at the disposal of the tax executive willing to read and reflect on writings outside the tax and business fields. Indeed, a review of the classics confirms that modern treatises on management containlittle that is new or original and much that is in error.

The great works of history (especially biography), psychology, and imaginative literature offer innumerable examples and insights useful to the tax executive charged with the responsibility of identifyingand retaining competent professionals, relating the work of subordinates to the needs and goals of the organization, and establishing and maintaining realationships with senior management.

The ability to motivate and provide leadership for subordinates is an essential skill for the tax executive. Tax Executives Institute itself acknowledges that, "As leaders, managers must instill the desire in tax department staff to deliver a quality product." (12) The quality of leadership may be considered the most important of all the skills needed by the tax executive. That is because it embodies the right blend of interpersonla, technical, and communication skills needed to get the job done.

Leadership has been a popular topic in recent years. The ascendancy of the topic is due in large part to the relative decline of the effectiveness of American industry. Dynamic leadership is seen as essential to a reinvigorated industrial base. Thus, books and articles extolling the virtues of leadership have appeared with great frequency. These writings propound and array of views on the traits and methods of the leader--some good and some not so good. (13) Most fail to draw on the great wisdom available in the writings of Western culture. In not doing so, they forfeit the opportunity to benefit from the lessons of human experience and the best that has been written on the subject of leadership over many centuries.

Plato's Republic, for example, contains much useful information on how the modern managermay inspire trust and confidence, provide psychological support, and obtain the best performacne possible from subordinates. Niccolo Machiavelli's Discourses Upon the First Decade of Livy and The Prince, both written in 1513, were written as manuals for administrators. (14) The importance and manner of communicating objectives to subordinates may be found in King Archidamus' address to his lieutenants and in Pericles' funeral oration to Athens in the first year of the great war between Athens and Sparta in the fourth century B.C.; these speeches are recounted in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War.

The biographies of Plutarch offer numerous examples of admirable managers. That of Fabius, Roman consul during the time of Hanibal's invasion, provids insight into managing through rapidly changing times. The story of Alexander the Great also teaches much about training and retaining subordinates. And no better model of the effective persuader could a manager take than that of the Cicero described by Plutarch.

Most tax executives probably would agree that integrity or ethical behavior is another essential for advancement in the modern corporation. At the same time, there appears to be general agreement that the subject of business ethics is inadequately taught in the business and professional schools and poorly nurtured by corporate employers.(15) To the extent it is the subject of study and acts as a limitation on behavior, it is concerned with the avoidance of legal sanctions and, regrettably, little else.

Even when attempts are made to place business ethics in context--the moral science of ethics--difficulties are encountered. For example, a recent article by a professor of business rejects the aid of philosophers in short order:

As the philosopher begins to speak, however, a difficulty immediately arises; corporate exexutives and philosophers approach problems in radically different ways. The academician ponders the intangible, savors the paradoxical, and embraces the peculiar; he or she speaks in a special language of categorical imperatives and deontological view-points that must be taken into consideration before a statement about honesty is agreed to have any meaning.

Like some Triassic reptile, the theoretical view of ethics lumbers along in the far past of Sunday School and PhilosophyI, while the reality of practical business concerns is constantly measuring a wide range of competing claims on time and resources against the unrelenting and objective marketplace.(16)

The foregoing quotation describes almost perfectly the activities of academic philosophers and the state of philosophical thought in the Twentieth Century. But, it evidences no awareness (the awareness that comes with a sound liberal education) of the contrast between the traditional role of moral philosophy and the activities of modern-day philosophers. Modern philosophers have almost nothing of interest or value to say to anyone not initiated into the mysteries, let alone the nomenclature, of their specialty. Modern philosophy is concerned almost exclusively with solving meaningless problems, examining linguistic difficulties, and avoiding and ignoring common sense and human experience. It has become just another narrow specialty within the academy. Such wasnot always the case. For more than 2,000 years, noral philosophy has concerned itself with normative behavior, distinctions between good and evil, and the difference between real and apparent goods. The great moral philosophers--Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Locke--did not cloak their thought in jargon to mimic the empirical sciences or "savor the paradoxical." They offered sound, common sense advice about the goals all men ought to seek and how to achieve those goals. Preeminent among the great works of moral philosophy is Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, a timeless guide to ethical behavior. Good books on business ethics have been published in recent years. (17) The great works of moral philosophy, however, will assist the tax executive in evaluating those books and determining why and whether their message should be heeded.

A frequent criticism of professionals by senior executives is an inability to deal with people effectively. Deficiency in this respect may impede advancement into the executive ranks more than the lack of any other skill, with the possible exception of an inability to communicate effectively. The tax executvie, no less than the tas executive, no less than the office politician, needs to know what motivates people and why they do what they do. "Pop psychology" books, so much in vogue today, may be of some minor value if not written primarily for the manipulator. (18) More rewarding than either modern popular works or the products of academia, however, are the classics on human behavior and the human mind. Thomas Acquina's treatise on human acts in his Summa Theologica, Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and William James' the Principles of Psychology are good examples.

The responsibilities of the manager require calling upon the whole range of human experience and wisdom. Therefore, it makes sense for the tax executive to resort to the very best that has been said and written that will bear on those subjects that are of interest. The knowledge is not to be found in the tax or business library. It is to be found in the greatest works of Western culture on philosophy, history, and imaginative literature.

Conclusion

This article began with the premise that every tax professional requires a general, liberal education to fully realize professional obligations and potential. Technical skills, the skills of the mechanic, are by themselves insufficient. If any doubt remains concerning the soundness of that premise, it should be dispelled by opening and reading with care some of the great works of Western culture.

Footnotes -- The Importance of a Liberal Education to the Tax Professional

(1) John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address at St. Andrews University (1867).

(2) J. Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses 110 (1932).

(3) A recent study indicates that corporations generally hire and prefer to hire tax personnel with some experience. Anderson & Arlinghaus, The Recruiting, Training and Professional Involvement of Tax Personnel of Large Corporations, 36 Tax Exec. 169, 173 (1984). Even a graduate degree in taxation does not not seem to fully overcome the obstacle of lack of experience. See arlinghaus & Anderson, The Recruiting, Training, and Professional Involvement of Tax Personnel of Large Corporations: A 1986 Update, 38 Tax Exec. 293, 299-301 (1986).

(4) A recent interview with Dr. Ernest L. Boyer, President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Indiicate that there is a new surge of interest in general education and that 80 percent of all institutions of higher learning are now examining or have recently examined their collegewide degree requirements. See The Chautauquan 16, col. 1 (Spring 1988).

(5) Quinn, Higher Education: The Pluralistic Monopoly, 28 The University Bookman 3,5 (1988).

(6) Anderson & Arlinghaus, the Recruitin, Training, and Professional Involvement of Tax Personnel of Large Corporations, 36 Tax Exec. 169, 171-73 (1984).

(7) See N.Y. Times, April 22, 1988, at 23, col. 3.

(8) Kimball, Debating the Humanities at YAle, The New Criterion 23, 27 (June 1986).

(9) An interesting example of awareness of the importance of ethos and pathos and their ostensible rejection is found in Federalist No. 1. Therein, Hamilton says that, "In the course of the preceding observations, I have had an eye, my fellow-citizens, to putting you upon your guard against all attempts, from whatever quarter, to influence your decision, in a matter of the utmost moment to your welfare, by any impressions other than those which may result from the evidence of truth." What purpose, other than an attempt to establish ethos, does Hamilton's reference to "my fellow-citizens" serve?

(10) See McCall, Center for Creative Leadership, Greensboro, N.C., Technical Report No. 17, Leadership and the Professional (1981).

(11) Drucker, Management Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices xi (1974).

(12) From a report submitted by the Tax Executives Institute's Corporate Tax Management Committee, reproduced at 32 TEI News 5 (1986).

(13) There are as many definitions of successful leadership as there are writers on the subject. See, e.g., Grove, Taking the Hype Out of Leadership, Fortune 87 (7arch 28, 1988); Bennis and Nanus, Leaders (1985); E. Luttwak, the Pentagon and the Art of War 185-203 (1984).

(14) This fact has not gone unrecognized in modern times. See R. Buskirk, Modern Management & Machiavelli (1974). (1984).

(15) See N.Y. Times, april 27, 1988, at 25, col. 5.

(16) Nash, Ethics Without the Sermon, Executive Success: Making It In Management ('arvard Business Review Executive Book Series 1983).

(17) An example is Van Vlack, Management Ethics Guide (1965).

(18) An example of the type that may be of some value is Viscott, Taking Care of Business (1985). An example of the type to be avoided is Weiss, The Organization Guerrilla (1975).