Lynn Turner, and the SEC, Enter the New Millennium

The years that Lynn Turner spent at the SEC as chief accountant under Chairman Arthur Levitt were turbulent and challenging. In this month’s entry in The CPA Journal’s Millennium Series, Turner speaks with refreshing frankness about his perspective on issues, trends, and forces that will continue to affect financial reporting and accounting standards setting and rulemaking in the future.

Turner believes that the role of the SEC and other regulatory agencies should ideally be fulfilled by private sector organizations—but he does not shy away from stepping in and protecting the interests of investors when the private sector does not move fast enough.

He also talks about the move toward international accounting standards to serve increasingly global capital markets, topics he sees at the forefront of the profession in the coming years, and his assessment of the controversial SEC auditor independence rule. As he steps into the next phase of an already distinguished career, his only regret about his service at the SEC is that they did not accomplish more.