“During 25 years at Ernst & Young’s office in Buffalo, N.Y., auditor C. Anthony Rider put his imprimatur on thousands of pristine financial statements. But that wasn’t enough,” writes Ianthe Dugan in today’s Wall Street Journal.

“A few years ago, Mr. Rider says, Ernst & Young set a quota for him: $3 million more a year in revenue from clients whose books he policed. He joined more than 2,000 fellow partners in rigorous training on how to sell consulting services on law, insurance, financial planning, mergers, technology, partnerships — ‘anything under the sun,’ the 50-year-old accountant says.”

” ‘It was like telling a reporter to sell subscriptions,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t do it, if I knew my clients didn’t really need it.’ “

“In 1999, his $300,000 salary was cut 10%. Then, in early 2000, Mr. Rider was fired. ‘I was never told explicitly why,’ he says.”

“Ernst & Young won’t comment on Mr. Rider’s case. ‘Our partners’ compensation is based on how well the firm does in any given year and how well the partners serve their individual clients within specialty areas,’ says spokesman Les Zuke.”

“Mr. Rider’s experience is essential to understanding how accountants morphed from ‘watchdogs to lapdogs,’ as the evolution was described during recent congressional hearings on the role of Arthur Andersen in the failure of Enron Corp. On Wednesday, Arthur Andersen was bracing for the government to file criminal obstruction charges against it Thursday as potential suitors’ interest in a merger waned.”

“Long before Andersen’s document-shredding became headline news, accountants, the pinstriped paragons of rectitude and respectability, found themselves coming under pressure from many directions to alter their centuries-old practices as their milieu changed. Over the past two decades, innovations in computer technology rendered many of the old-fashioned auditor’s functions obsolete, prodding accountants to find other ways to bring in revenue. Companies’ desire to produce ever-rosier results for an ever-larger and savvier shareholding public compelled accountants to find ways to put the best possible spin on clients’ financial reports.”

“And then there was simple greed. The industry had already shown it was susceptible. In the early 1970s, a prominent accountant was linked to the Watergate scandal. The next decade, the savings-and-loan crisis raised questions about how accountants could have let things get so bad.”

“In recent years, partners’ pay, largely determined by hourly billing rates, fell way behind that of accountants’ investment-banking brethren, enriched by the rise of the stock-market culture of the ’80s and ’90s. Hiring consultants and having people such as Mr. Rider sell their services to audit clients was a way to narrow the gap.”

“It did, and it didn’t. The Big Five accounting firms — PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, Arthur Andersen and KPMG — collectively doubled their revenue in less than a decade, to $26.1 billion last year, according to Public Accounting Report newsletter. But most of that increase derived from the consulting services and went to consultants and hard-sell accountants, not to the likes of Mr. Rider.”

“And ultimately, as the Enron debacle became news to vie with war and recession, the ancient profession sacrificed the public confidence that underpinned its reputation. Now, accountants wallow at the bottom among professions in public-opinion polls they topped 20 years ago. The business is drawing fewer top students, more government scrutiny and bad jokes. ‘We just got a message from Saddam Hussein,” President George W. Bush chortled recently. “The good news is that he’s willing to have his nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons counted. The bad news is he wants Arthur Andersen to do it.’ “