After Enron, Worldcom and the disappearance of a rather well-known auditing firm as a result of playing fast and loose with accounting standards, it could be argued that finance professionals should focus on their traditional role as a safe pair of hands.
After all, when it's your shares, your salary or your pension fund at stake, wouldn't you rather have a boring bean counter in charge than someone who appears to be a bit of a maverick? Let the designers and the marketing types grow goatees and wear t-shirts if they want - let's see our accountants back the pinstriped suits again, where they belong.
Logical, perhaps, at first sight - but, as an idea, it ignores just how much accounting has changed over the past decade or so. To be genuinely effective in the modern business world, accountants need to be fully integrated with the organisations they work for, not stuck away in some back room.
They need to be able to liaise well with a wide range of other professionals, such as sales people, logistics specialists, IT technicians and operational managers. All this means that they need good communication and interpersonal skills or, to put it another way, a bit of character. And, while I would always counsel erring on the side of caution, the interview is definitely the place to demonstrate that character to your potential employer.
Nigel Lynn ACMA, managing director, Hewitson Walker
Accountancy is much more demanding today. Accountants need to be highly proficient technically, while demonstrating a range of wider commerical skills to deliver everything that's asked of them.
But at interview, being able to show commercial flair and displaying initiative and personality is not about being unconventional or maverick - it's about preparing properly by finding out as much as possible about the company, the role and the corporate culture.
The way you approach an interview with a small, funky media firm with a casual dress policy and bean bags in reception is obviously going to be completely different from how you would sell yourself to a large corporate staffed by the pinstriped suit brigade.
It's about knowing what sort of environment is going to suit you, how you might fit into that environment, and tailoring your approach accordingly.
One of the objectives of the interview is for you to ascertain if you want the job and to be in the bext position to secure an offer. It's a sales process - people buy from people they like, people that like them and often, people that look and think like them.
Presenting yourself as a maverick risk-taker may therefore not be the wisest approach. By all means demonstrate your personality and flair - but at this stage of your career, a safe pair of hand on the tiller may well be the preferred option for many employers.
Paul Bibby, managing director, Elements