Curriculum：CHMB5801 Financial Accounting

The CHEMBA Financial Accounting Course has refresheded my accounting knowledges, and also brought back the study memories of my undergraduate days more than a decade ago. This course illustrates the key accounting concepts and principles to illuminate the three key financial statements (i.e. balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement), and the technique of analysis to explore business performance and potential. This course is led by two wonderful lecturers and one thoughtful Teaching Assistant(TA), Professor Tony Shieh, Pervin Shroff and Garry Guan, respectively, who have shared their knowledge and insights in detail. 

Professor Tony elaborated the differences and trend of accounting standards between GAAP and IFRS, key elements of financial statements, and know-hows of reading company’s annual report to us. As an accounting graduate myself, I had underestimated the difficulties of mid-term exam when Professor Tony told us the exam is “simple and easy”. I messed up my mid-term due to inadequate preparation and over-confidence, and I sincerely hope the future students will not repeat my mistake.

Professor Pervin taught us the technique of analyzing financial statements with all kinds of ratios, and shared a bunch of real-world cases. Among those cases, the WorldCom accounting scandal case left a deep impression in my mind, where WorldCom overstated its assets by over US$11billion through deceitful journal entries, which transferred the operating expenses to capital expenses, between 1999 and 2002. The fraud was uncovered and reported by the WorldCom’s internal audit team, and later verified by the external auditor KPMG. As an internal auditor myself, I was enlightened by this case on the importance of knowing and understanding financial accounting, which would show me the path to keep track of company’s financial transactions and identify the abnormality. 

TA Garry had played a key role in this course. He translated the difficult accounting terms with example in Chinese for us during the online class, so that we can understand the content easier and more efficient. In addition, he sacrificed his personal time to answer our questions on WeChat with patient, and arranged an online tutorial to explain the key components of the 10-K annual report for us before mid-term exam.