Fiduciary Responsibility

Yes, I watch too much TV. But you know what? You can learn a lot from TV. On Bar Rescue, Jon Taffer mentions fiduciary responsibility from time to time, especially when counseling partner/owners. Curiosity got the best of me and I started googling and reading about fiduciary responsibility. Two big scary words that can be broken down to – a person owes it to their partners, investors, clients, employers, and employees to treat their assets with care, confidentiality, loyalty, obedience, and accounting. Assets can be money, inventory, reputation, people, or just about anything.

If you have read my post “Hire Your Own Accountant”, you’ll know my first question during my fiduciary investigation was whether accountants have a fiduciary responsibility. I found this on the AIPCA website: While an accountant normally is not considered to be a fiduciary to his or her clients, the AICPA Professional Code of Conduct embodies standards of conduct which are closely analogous to a fiduciary relationship—objectivity, integrity, free of conflicts of interest and truthfulness. So my next question was – Is Boamah just a bad CPA or did he betray me in Pierre’s best interest? I will probably never have the answer to that question.

As a partner, Pierre ignored just about every aspect of fiduciary responsibility. If you’ve been reading all my posts, you can see he was not loyal to me (his partner!), he did not protect the bar’s reputation when it came to Todd and Max, he wasn’t accountable as he didn’t even put in his seed money, and he didn’t care to do his marketing job to get butts in the seats. So was Pierre just a bad partner or did he betray his fiduciary responsibility to me intentionally? Well, he still has the bar open so I guess that answers that question.

If you’ve been reading all my posts, you also know I’ve had my share of employees who felt no fiduciary responsibility of their own, stealing from me, refusing to perform the job as trained, etc. However, Kyle the Bartender was exceptional in his fiduciary responsibility. He definitely helped me keep the faith in humanity. If you ever have a business associate like Kyle, do everything possible to keep that relationship in good standing. I miss Kyle.