Joseph Edmund Sterrett

Joseph Edmund Sterrett (June 17, 1870 – March 22, 1934) was an American accountant, known as one of "accountancy's most active pioneers" and the 11th inductee into the Accounting Hall of Fame in 1953.

Biography Born in Brockway, Pennsylvania to minister Ezekiel Sterrett and Martha Jane McCurdy Sterrett, Sterrett started working for a coal company in Beechtree, Pennsylvania at the age of 17, and moved into accountancy work. In 1899 he obtained his Certified Public Accountant license for the state of Pennsylvania.

Work Professional ethics, 1907 In the 1922 article Ethics of Accountancy, Edward P. Moxey explained, that the subject of ethics for the accountant is one which has engaged the attention of the members of that profession for quite a number of years. In fact, the subject was one of those presented before the Congress of Accountants, meeting at St. Louis in September, 1904. Prior to that time, however, definite rules of professional conduct had been formulated by the accounting societies of England for their members. In the latter part of 1905 a bill was introduced into Parliament by the Government of Tasmania for the regulation of the profession of accountancy. This bill made mention specifically of certain actions on the part of accountants which were to be regarded as unprofessional, and the practice of which should render them liable to fine, suspension or expulsion.

Moxey (1922) further told, that at the Convention of the American Association of Public Accountants (now American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) held at St. Paul, Minnesota, in October, 1907, Sterrett presented a paper on "Professional Ethics" which became the standard treatise in the decades to come. This paper was characterized at that time by Robert Hiester Montgomery, as one "which bids fair to become a classic." Sterrett called attention to the fact that the older professions of law and medicine had even at that time (1907) made considerable progress in the development of systems of professional ethics, and called attention also to the work being accomplished along that line by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. In measuring the distinction between the accountant as a member of one of the newer professions, as contrasted with the lawyer or physician, Sterrett stated:

Moxey (1922) commented, that while since that time there have been more or less serious infringements of the rules of ethics as laid down for the guidance of accountants, yet these have been dealt with fairly and impartially by committees on professional conduct of the American Association of Public Accountants and of its successor, the American Institute of Accountants. The work of these committees has always tended towards the improvement and development of the profession, to the end that there shall be a recognition on the part of its practitioners as well as on the part of the general public, that all who are its members not only are those of high professional attainment, but those in whom the moral ideal exists in more than name only.

Selected publications Sterrett, Joseph Edmund. Professional ethics. 1907. Sterrett, Joseph Edmund. Every-day ethics; addresses delivered in the Page lecture series, 1909, before the senior class of the Sheffield scientific school, Yale university, (1910). Sterrett, Joseph Edmund, and Joseph Stancliffe Davis. The fiscal and economic condition of Mexico. 1928. Kirkbride, Franklin Butler, Joseph Edmund Sterrett, and Henry Parker Willis. The Modern Trust Company: Its Functions and Organization, an Outline of Fiduciary Banking. Macmillan, 1920.

Articles, a selection Sterrett, Joseph Edmund. "The profession of accountancy." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 28 (1906): 16–27.