Alumni Profile: Stephen Zeff
We are delighted to recognize Stephen (Steve) Zeff as our featured PhD alumnus in the 2025 Paton Annual Report. Steve’s distinguished career spans decades of remarkable achievements. Due to the extraordinary scope of his experiences, only a portion of his interview was featured in our print edition. We invite you to enjoy the full conversation below.
What initially inspired you to pursue a career in accounting, and what keeps you passionate about it after all these years?
As an undergraduate at the University of Colorado, I was a reporter and editor of the student newspaper for all four years, eventually becoming its managing editor. I viewed that experience, where I was informing and edifying readers, as consonant with what teachers do. I financed my two-year master’s program at Colorado by full-time teaching of basic undergraduate courses in accounting and management. That’s when I learned that I enjoyed teaching — explaining a technical subject to students, and endeavoring to inspire their interest in the subject — and especially coming to know my students one on one, helping them make decisions about their academic careers and their future professional careers. Even today, I still enjoy meeting with selected freshman and sophomore students for two or more hours on a Saturday afternoon, listening to them talk about themselves and their aspirations, thus enabling me to help them peer into the future and make choices.
Can you share some of the significant milestones in your career and how they have shaped your professional journey?
An important milestone that pointed me toward assuming leadership roles in international research and technical assistance was my founding — in 1968, in my eighth year as an academic — of the Spanish-language Boletín Interamericano de Contabilidad (Inter-American Accounting Newsletter), a quarterly publication. It was intended to inform Latin American accounting academics and practitioners of the latest developments in their field.
I obtained financial grants from USAID and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants to take a two-month tour of 10 Latin American republics during the summer of 1968, when I met with leaders of the accounting profession, accounting academics, and top partners in the audit firms to explore how best to mount this newsletter, and enlisting their collaboration. All the meetings were conducted in Spanish (except in Brazil, where Portuguese is spoken), a language I began studying in high school and then continued to learn through a Berlitz course in Chicago in the summer of 1966.
With the help of a Mexican accounting professor in Monterrey, whom I visited every three months to complete the writing, editing, and production of the Boletín, I published 11 issues from 1968 to 1971, and I then transferred it as a going concern to the Instituto Mexicano de Contadores Públicos (Mexican Institute of Public Accountants) as the newsletter of the Asociación Interamericana de Contabilidad (Inter-American Accounting Association). Today, the Asociación publishes it as the Boletín Electrónico AIC al Día.
Through this experience, I made many academic friends in other countries, and I became interested in learning more about how and why accounting was different from country to country. Since then, I have broadened this interest in ‘comparative international accounting’ to Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific. As one of my academic colleagues observed, I “became international before international was cool.” I have written books and articles on international accounting, which have been well received, and I began to deliver lectures in university workshops and conferences and congresses in nearly 60 countries around the world. Almost all my lectures in Latin America (including Brazil), Spain, and Portugal were in Spanish. My last lectures at conferences and congresses overseas were in 2019 in Brazil and, following the COVID pandemic, in 2023 in Finland and Great Britain.
How did your PhD experience at the University of Michigan contribute to your success in the accounting field?
When I entered Michigan’s PhD program in 1957, my two major fields were accounting and industrial relations, and my task was to choose between them. And that’s when I encountered Professor William A. Paton, from whom I took three courses. He was truly an intellectual force field. Most teaching of accounting at other universities, and certainly in my undergraduate studies at Colorado, characterized accounting as a dry, transaction-based, historical cost form of recordkeeping. Paton energetically challenged this orthodoxy and really opened my eyes. He argued that accounting should be infused with economic analysis, and, as a “value man,” he advocated bringing current values into the financial statements, one way or another. I found his approach to be refreshing and intellectually challenging. It made accounting much more vital in my teaching and research. Mostly because of Professor Paton’s influence, I decided to pursue an academic career in accounting.
What are the most notable changes you've observed in the accounting profession over the course of your career?
Of course, the advance of computers and a broad range of immensely complex technology is one which continues apace today, with the onset of artificial intelligence. I like to say to my friends that I am a creature of the 20th century who is trapped in the 21st century. I am a very low-tech person. I do not even own a smartphone. A big change for accounting academics has been the ascendancy of hypothesis-testing empirical and mathematical modeling research, which in the U.S. has almost entirely eclipsed the classical modes of research, including historical research. I am a historical researcher, a rarity in the leading American business schools. Also, since the 1990s, international accounting research has become popular among academics in the leading business schools.
Are there any specific projects or initiatives you’re particularly proud of that have had a lasting impact on your field?
What I am proud of does not necessarily mean that it also has had a lasting impact on my field. As a historical researcher in a U.S. setting of almost solely hypothesis-testing empirical and mathematical modeling researchers means that mainline researchers do not even read my published research. Yet that doesn’t stop them from seeking my help when they need advice on some facet of history in their own research. The research works of which I am most proud are the following (all are historical):
Forging Accounting Principles in Five Countries: A History and an Analysis of Trends, a 1972 book which was the first serious study of the historical evolution of standard setting for accounting in different countries, with a good deal of interviewing in the five countries.
Henry Rand Hatfield: Humanist, Scholar, and Accounting Educator, a 2000 book which was based on very extensive historical research and interviewing, beginning in the 1960s.
(with Kees Camfferman) Financial Reporting and Global Capital Markets: A History of the International Accounting Standards Committee, 1973-2000, a 2007 book which was a major historical/international study, with extensive interviewing in 16 countries.
(with Kees Camfferman) Aiming for Global Accounting Standards: The International Accounting Standards Board, 2001-2011, a 2015 book which was a follow-up major historical/international study, with extensive interviewing, again in 16 countries.
“The Rise of ‘Economic Consequences’,” a 1978 article and by far my most widely cited article, which means that it did really have an impact on the field.
What legacy do you hope to leave behind in the accounting profession?
I don’t think about this much, but I would like to believe that I have shown that historical research can help us understand how and why the field of accounting has changed over time.
What motivated you to compose the research paper “Evolution of Accounting at the University of Michigan: 1901 to 2024”?
In 2023, Professor Gregory Miller, faculty director of the Paton Center, approached me to research and write the paper. It was intended to dovetail with the Ross School of Business’ celebration of its 100th anniversary in 2024. I enjoyed going through the university’s annual course catalogues and other historical documents to provide an interesting record of the comings and goings of the accounting faculty, the roll of the accounting PhD graduates, and the faculty’s and PhD graduates’ major achievements and distinctions during their careers. The paper is scheduled for publication as an article in the December 2025 issue of the Accounting Historians Journal.