What internal demons
impel a suicide?

No reaction but
sorrow seems appropriate, for the self-inflicted gunshot death on August 13 of New
York-based Deloitte partner Daniel Pirron.

Limited attention has
been paid in the accountancy media (here and here). Of which, some comments are tracking his family’s suggested linkage to Deloitte’s UK client Standard Chartered Plc, and the
Iran-related money-laundering scandal in which, the week before, the bank had
agreed with the New York Department of Financial Services to a $ 340 million
fine.

That speculation is
unfortunate, for reasons only starting with Pirron’s scope of work itself, in the
office of Deloitte’s general counsel, and the firm’s statement that “he was not
involved in any way” with its work for Standard Chartered.

Focus here
on suicides proximate to financial and corporate wrong-doing – an area of my
concern long-predating my unhappily accurate prediction on December 16, 2008, that it was a "safe but unfortunate bet…that at least one
remorse-driven suicide will further color the already tawdry (Madoff) tale” –
coming only too true a week later with the suicide in his Madison Avenue office
of Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, the founder of a fund whose investors lost millions with
Bernard Madoff. 

That context is difficult enough –
initially because the sample size is miniscule, making attempts at meaningful
generalizations intensely hazardous. The conditions are, however, readily
distinguishable from the impulsive acts of the emotionally immature –
fortunately most often not effective – or the reasoned acts of the gravely ill
– movie director Tony Scott’s recent fatal leap being perhaps explicable by a report (since disputed) of his
terminal brain cancer.

A non-comprehensive survey of
scandal-related suicides starts with one point of interest – that with the
exception of the recent failed attempt by Peregrine CEO Russell Wasendorf Sr, those
driven to act are not the principal perpetrators.

Which should be no surprise. The
necessary level of introspective regret and remorse would not be in the DNA of
the typical white-collar criminal. Think of the egos both of those actually
brought to book – a sample including Bernie Cornfeld, Bernie Ebbers and Bernie
Madoff – and those of tattered moral fabric although escaping the formalities
of prosecution – “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap and Donald Trump and Angelo Mozilo and
Dick Fuld.

Instead it’s the secondary players –
the lower-level executives and the gate-keepers – Frank Shuch, the least of the
accused triumvirate at Connecticut’s Colonial Realty (1992); Cliff Baxter at
Enron (2002); Bernie Madoff’s son Mark (2008); or the reported attempt by
Satyam CFO Srinivas Vadlamani (2009).

Even so noted, extreme personal acts
are not in character for those choosing careers in professional services,
particularly accountancy – there being perhaps some dignifying comfort behind
the tradition of ill-founded ridicule of the bean-counters’ brown shoes and
green eye shades.

True enough that accountants are
neither saints nor angels. As with any fallible system of human design, the
firms’ best-tuned screens for personal quality will let slip the rare
exceptions – those challenged by intelligence or discipline, the addict or the
abuser, the venal or the pliable. And while public accounting is not a vehicle
for great wealth accumulation, those shifting to entrepreneurship or the
executive suite are on occasion seduced or suborned.

But in the four decades of my broad experience
across the profession, only a handful have met the defined standards of the
criminal mind. Practitioners of independent assurance — first delivered to
Victorian-era public companies starting in 1850 with the report by William
Welch Deloitte himself on the accounts of the Great Western Railway — have
overwhelmingly been people of stability, intelligence, good faith and honorable
intentions.

The best scholarship
on human behavior and choice-making counsels us to resist the instinctive impulse
to construct simplistic stories in a futile search to comprehend the irrational.

So – rather than press an inexplicable
coincidence, genuine mourning by the profession is in order – joining with his
family, friends and colleagues – for the sad death of troubled Dan Pirron.

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