Spreadsheets And Spaghetti -- Renaissance Roots -- Video Aims To Show Accounting As Art

Have you heard the one about the guy who went into accounting because he was good with numbers but didn't have the personality to be an economist?

A joke? Perhaps. But as far as a trio of Seattle University accounting professors is concerned, the stereotype of accountants as contemporary Bob Crachits - men and women in green eye shades hunched over electronic spreadsheets - is too often uncomfortably close to truth.

So, in an effort to attract bright, well-rounded students whose intellectual interests extend beyond the pristine balance of debits and credits, the professors have produced a documentary about Luca Pacioli, a little-known Italian Renaissance scholar considered the father of modern accounting. It will be distributed to colleges nationwide this fall through a major textbook publisher and may eventually find its way onto public television.

To tweak the intellectual curiosity of practicing accountants, the trio also is planning to honor Pacioli in 1994 with a symposium held in the small Italian town of Sansepolcro, 60 miles southeast of Florence, where Pacioli was born.

Said Dave Tinius, chairman of the Seattle University accounting department and one of the founders of the Pacioli Project: ``What we really don't want to talk about there is accounting. What we do want to talk about is art and history, food. . . .''

Making accounting sexy may take more than an appealing documentary and high-brow discussion served up with pasta and Chianti in a picturesque Italian town. But the Pacioli Project appears to be a step in the right direction.

Premiered recently at Seattle University to a group of accountants, business people, academics and paparazzi, ``Luca Pacioli, Unsung Hero of the Renaissance'' won rave reviews.

``I thought the film was first-class,'' said Stu Woodhouse, a partner in the Seattle office of Ernst & Young, one of several major accounting firms that helped underwrite the 27-minute video. ``Of course, I'm in accounting. But if I had actually turned on Channel 9 and saw it in front of me, I would have kept watching.''

That's a high compliment for a low-budget documentary that is about, well, the roots of accounting. But the video aims for entertainment as well as enlightenment.

Though he eventually became a Franciscan monk, Pacioli, who was born in 1445, was a celebrity during his lifetime, lecturing frequently to packed halls throughout Italy on such topics as mathematics, geometry, algebra, chess, proportionality and military strategy. For seven years he tutored Leonardo da Vinci in math and is credited with influencing the much-praised proportionality of da Vinci's masterpiece, ``The Last Supper.''

Pacioli's reputation as the father of accounting comes from a chapter in his best-known treatise, ``The Collected Knowledge of Arithmetic, Geometry, Proportion and Proportionality,'' published in 1494.

Frank Gaudette, chief financial officer of Microsoft, said Pacioli also helped advance the personal-computer industry. Gaudette made a cameo appearance in the video, attributing much of the success of the personal-computer industry to its use in business as an accounting tool. ``So, in a sense, Pacioli's theories led to the creation of the spreadsheet,'' he said.

Tinius says the point of the Pacioli Project is to show that Pacioli was a true Renaissance man, interested in everything from art to architecture, math to military strategy, and that he should be a model for contemporary accountants.

But attracting the best and brightest isn't easy. ``It's just such a struggle winning them over, '' said Chauncey Burke, one of the Seattle University professors involved with the project. ``They walk in and their eyes cloud over. All business students have to take some accounting, and all they want to do is get it over with and get onto something they think is more interesting, like marketing.''

Jim Emerson, publisher of the Professional Services Review, a national newsletter for accountants, agrees that the profession needs to improve its image. Emerson, who was a certified public accountant before he turned to publishing, introduces himself at cocktail parties as a writer.

``People think that's a lot more interesting than accounting,'' Emerson said.

Maybe the video will attract students, and maybe it won't. But, at the very least, the project shows that accounting professors know how to think big and have a pretty good time while they're at it.

Tinius credits the idea for the project to Bill Weis, a colleague with a flair for drama and an interest in history. He said Weis started talking 10 years ago about the possibility of commemorating the 500th anniversary of Pacioli's famous treatise. ``It was sort of a joke at first, but it sort of grabbed him,'' Tinius said. ``I think we talked about bringing balancing acts to the campus, or something like that.''

But during a 1987 ski vacation in Europe, Tinius and Weis tracked down Pacioli's birthplace, did some historical research and decided to shoot a seven-minute video to interest accounting firms in underwriting something larger. Rich Fassio, a former SU marketing student trying to establish himself as a filmmaker, agreed to help. The video was produced a year later.

By 1989, Tinius, Weis and Burke had raised nearly $100,000, including $30,000 from South-Western Publishing, a Cincinnati-based textbook publisher - enough to return to Italy for 12 days to shoot the film on a tight budget. Burke and Tinius appear in the film dressed in Renaissance robes, and Weis, an accomplished amateur actor, is narrator.

Said Tinius, ``We hope to get Pacioli's portrait on a U.S. postage stamp, and we're trying to interest in the Wall Street Journal in a story on the front page, center column.''