To further examine the meaning of the public interest as expressed in the rhetorical
claims of American public accounting profession, we note a recent article appearing in
The CPA Journal, a publication of the New York State Society of CPAs, in which
Robert Colson, the Editor-in-Chief, commented on the claims to serve the public interest
expressed in the AICPA Code. Colson suggests that the code is in conflict at certain
points with the mission statement of the US Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC), which explicitly claims to be the investor’s advocate (Colson, 2004, p. 80). Colson
argues that