The modern history of accounting has been marked by the rapid escalation of a vast array of accounting standards and other technical rules. In spite of this enormous regulatory activity, sudden collapses and other associated financial reporting failures persist. In such a climate, audited financial statements are the most highly regulated of commodities but also the least reliable. This book investigates this issue from the perspective of accounting as a professional occupation. The author argues that the accounting profession is beset by an inferior and incomplete notion of quality in its work which emphasizes compliance with processing rules, rather then the correspondence with commercial phenomena necessary to make financial statements reliable guides for human activity. It is revealed that the discourse of accounting researchers is largely unconcerned with improving the technical quality of financial statements and that the emphasis in accounting education is on simply the mastery of a rule-book. Accounting practice itself has degenerated into a ritual of rule compliance.