Common to these episodes is a struggle to manage tensions associated with the (long- term) movement of accountants into markets that have not been conventionally associated with their professional expertise and status. In different ways, the EC 8th Directive and the Financial Services Act had the unintended consequence of raising the visibility of accountants’ operation in a variety of arenas - notably, consultancy and the selling of financial services - operations that, potentially, unsettle or compromise the commonsense representation of their work as ‘independent’ and ‘expert’ . This pressure on the credibility of accountants has been increased by a.
