June 29, 2009

2009 Forensic Accounting & Financial Criminology

Last two weeks I attended an International Conference on Forensic Accounting & Financial Criminology held at KL Tower for two days (June 16 & 17, 2009). The conference was great. Many fraud practitioners attended and presented their papers and talks and I learned a lot of new things that I can share with my students in Auditing class next semester.
Among those who present at this inaugural conference were the Dean of Faculty of Accountancy, Prof. Dr. Ibrahim Kamal Abdul Rahman; Director of Accounting Research Institute (ARI), Prof. Dr. Normah Hj. Omar; Prof. Dr. Zabihollah Rezaee (University of Memphis, USA); Prof. Dr. Glen Moyes (University of Texas-Pan American, USA); Rob McCusker (University of Teesside, UK) and many others.






The opening ceremony for The Asia Pacific International Conference on Forensic Accounting and Financial Criminology 2009 was held during dinner on 16 June 2009, with the guest of honour attended by YDH CP Dato’ Koh Hong Sun, the Director of Commercial Crime Investigations Department of Royal Police Malaysia, who represented Tan Sri Musa Dato’ Hassan Azahari, the Inspector General of Police, Malaysia. From UiTM, Professor Dr Mustaffa Mohd Zain, the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic and International) represented the Vice‐Chancellor of UiTM. A book, ‘Combatting Financial Fraud through Forensic Accounting and Financial Criminology’ was launched by CP Dato’ Koh.

This program included two talks by two special guests from overseas, namely Prof. Dr. Zabihollah Rezaee on ‘Researchable topics for accounting research’ and Prof. Dr. Glen Moyes on ‘Sustaining the Phd Journey’. This colloquium was indeed honoured to have two other foreigners, Prof Keith Maunders from University of South Pacific, Fiji, and Mr Rob McCusker. The four visitors were involved in the assessment of Phd progress presentations at the colloquium. We were also facilitated by professors from local universities too, including Prof. Dr. Takiah Iskandar (UKM), Prof. Dr. Fauziah Md. Taib (USM) and Prof Dr Norman (UKM). This full one‐day colloquium was attended by 100 participants from far and near.

Congratulations UiTM!

Meeting with SMIDEC

A meeting with Mr. Roslan Mohamed of the Small and Medium Industries Development Corporation (SMIDEC) will be held on Sunday, July 5, 2009 at Alor Star. I will bring along Batik Merbok team to visit this organisation and discuss how things of which SBDC is entrusted to can be arranged. This is an initial initiative taken by SBDC to develop rapport with SMIDEC as its endeavour to help small businesses in the Northern Region to prosper in their business activities.

Just a little bit about SMIDEC...

SMIDEC was established on 2nd May 1996. The establishment of SMIDEC was in recognition of the need for a specialised agency to further promote the development of Small and Medium Industries (SMIs) in the manufacturing sector through the provision of advisory services, fiscal and financial assistance, infrastructural facilities, market access and other support programmes.

SMIDEC strives to create resilient and efficient Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), able to compete in a liberalised market environment. The Corporation will promote SMEs to be an integral part of the country's industrial development capable of producing high value-added parts, components and finished products. SMIDEC will serve as the national focal point for the overall development of SMEs in the country.

June 24, 2009

Deal with Financial Crisis

The crisis which has swept world financial markets and the broader economy has affected many of business activities across the globe. Keep yourselves updated and deal with the fallout by navigating your way through the crisis. Make wise decisions as much as possible. Apply some strategic management accounting techniques to analyse your options so that informed decisions can be made.

June 11, 2009

Thinking Student

There has to be a system able to educate and equip the people with all the tools necessary to face the complex pressures of modern society.

We celebrated Teachers’ Day a few weeks ago. Talk of education always brings to my mind a speech given by Dorothy L. Sayers at Oxford in 1947, which was later printed in essay form bearing the title The Lost Tools of Learning.

Although Sayers was not an educationist, but rather a novelist, her profound critique of the modern education system has initiated a classical education movement in the US and Europe.
I first came across her ideas several years ago, and those ideas have stayed in my mind. And I find them to be relevant more so now as our government is planning to review or revamp our education system and curriculum.

It is indeed timely for the Government to introduce a new education system that is able to really educate and equip the people with all the tools necessary to face the complex pressures of modern society.

This is the crux of Sayer’s critique of the modern education system: the inability to produce educated people equipped with the necessary tools of modern life.

Our national education system has failed, the public has said. They are clamouring for a better education system to replace the present one. Our system is accused of being exam-oriented and produces trained "parrots". Why?

One of the reasons is that our system today is burdening students with too many subjects. Since there are too many subjects, teachers are not able to concentrate on developing personalities and individual characters. Their focus is on completing the entire syllabus of every subject, otherwise the students may not be able to answer questions in the coming term examinations.
No time is spared for inter-personal discussions, counselling or informal advice-giving sessions between teachers and students. The situation in our country is worsened by the attitudes of some of our ministers or politicians, who want to have their say with regard to the education system.

It is as though every minister deems he has the right to have his say in deciding what subjects should or should not be taught in our schools, without being duly qualified.

When we feel that the trend is towards Information Technology (IT), we want subjects related to IT to be taught in schools.

Later, when we dispatched our angkasawan to the moon, we wanted Astronomy to be part of our curriculum.

When we feel entrepreneurship is important, we want it to be part of the subjects taught in schools.

Recently, we seem to feel that national unity and patriotism is at stake, therefore we demand that these subjects be included in the national curriculum. It goes on endlessly.
We have actually lost sight of what education is all about and what its true objective entails.
Education is not about teaching particular "subjects". Neither it is about the number of subjects taught in schools. It is about nurturing a human being to be a "good man".

Modern students today are certainly taught more subjects, but that does not mean they are actually "good" or know more; nor does it mean they are better equipped than those before them.

Compared with students of the Athenean Middle Ages, who only studied three subjects at the trivium and four subjects at the quadrivium, for example, today’s students should perform better, considering their intellectual growth.

But this is not the case. Many a time an interview panel is frustrated with the performance of our graduates, despite their having spent more than a decade at the primary and secondary education levels and approximately four years at the tertiary level.

They certainly "studied" hundreds of subjects and, yet, they do not know the basics, have no confidence in speaking, no critical and logical thought when arguing, have no common sense, rational thought and so on. Why?

Because they had never been taught to think, how to use reason or how to argue during their entire "formal" education.

The only reason they have succeeded thus far is, perhaps, purely because they were good at memorising data – not that their intellect has been developed.

The findings of child development psychiatrists and research workers have emphasised the deep impressions early experiences have on children and the lasting effects of such impressions.
Comenius, in The School of Infancy, Montessori, in his The Secret of Childhood, and countless others have stressed the importance of right education at an early age.

In Islam, emphasis is given even when the parent is still searching for his spouse, seeking only for one with upright religious bearing since their children will be affected by their parents’ character.

At their early stage, children should be taught the proper use of the tools of learning before they begin to apply these to "subjects", which should only be taught at a later stage.
At the foundational stage, they should only be taught three things, the trivium: Grammar, Logic (Dialectic), and Rhetoric.

This is quite similar to the traditional Islamic primary education where children at an early age should be taught, among other things, the Qur’an, language, literature (adab), ethics (akhlaq) and logic (mantiq).

Only at the secondary or university levels perhaps whatever subjects suit the national interest and the contemporary age may be introduced.

In general, children in Malaysia are reluctant to go to school, unlike children in the developed countries who exhibit eagerness and enthusiasm.

Children in Europe find school very interesting, and their teachers to be very loving and friendly. In Malaysia, even before going to school, we have a hard time with our children.
Teachers are assumed to be fierce because of their demeanor, like "teacher-cum-police" officers.
They also envision being bombarded with too much information that they are required to know, not to mention writing.

But their ability to reflect, think and ponder is not being groomed and developed. They are required to memorise data where all the answers are given.

Our education policy makers should sit down seriously with educationists and "experts" to come up with a better education policy for the sake of our future generations.

We have had enough of the same old moans whenever review of our education system is mentioned. Nothing substantial has been done thus far. Even the perennial issue of heavy school bags has not been effectively resolved yet.

Hopefully the "people’s Prime Minister" will look into this matter more urgently. *Star On-Line*

June 01, 2009

Progress of the FRGS Paper - 1

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله

Dear all,

Please find the first draft of our FRGS research paper covering Intro, Motivation, Background, LR, Methodologies and Objectives of the research for your kind perusal. Kindly review the paper and let me have your comments before June 3, 2009. I welcome all sort of comments.

Nor Hafizah & Zubir: Can we work out on the questionnaire part?
Norhafizah: Please arrange the visit to ISH a.s.a.p. and let us know.
Noridah: Both of us will go to ISH/LWEH/KMC once the dates are decided upon.
Noridah & Leily: We are now insyaAllah ready for data collection. Hope the background and any important aspects of those hospitals are analysed before the visits.
Prof IKAR: Your comments are most welcome. Any past data about Ipoh Specialist Hospital? Any guide to establish benchmarking standards?
Thank you so much to everyone! :-)

Regards,
Zubir Azhar