The Hindu Business Line : Why peel onions & opinions?

A WORD that has suddenly escaped from the dictionary of accountants is `opinion' and almost everybody is ready with his or her opinion on opinion. One school of thought says, Chup! (Silence!) no opinion. The other argues that there is freedom to express one's opinion.

"In my opinion, it's all a waste of time," is a sentence from the dictionary's `use in sentences of your own'. But an auditor, though knowing things to be so, would rather say, `and to the best of my information and explanation given', to continue after `in my opinion.' The fee he gets is for his opinion; and nobody peels it like an onion, because results would be the same in both the cases.

Two economists have three opinions, they say, but that could just be the minimum number. Doctors are notorious in stimulating the need in patients for a second opinion, third and fourth.

So much so, when a patient suffering from sore throat met a doctor for treatment, the doc said, "Your tonsils have to be removed." That's surgery, so the patient said, "I want a second opinion." Doctor said, "Okay, you're ugly, too."

In professional accounting and tax consultancy, they talk of opinion shopping. Client goes about searching for an `agreeable' auditor, somebody who would be willing to follow questionable accounting principles, and give a clean report. Opinion is not supposed to sell in supermarkets, so regulators frown at such a practice.

Opinion is a personal view, based on the opinion-maker's judgment. While individuals can escape from the need to explain how they came to a certain opinion, judicial opinion has to trace reasoning too before reaching the verdict. Opinion is a convenient peg to summarise a whole bunch of facts. One may question the veracity of facts but with opinions, you either take them or leave them. Voltaire rues that opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.

Errors of opinion may be tolerated, says Thomas Jefferson, where reason is left free to combat it. Bernard M. Baruch too gives allowance: "Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts."

So, what's wrong if you put a thousand opinions together and tabulate them? For instance, Gallup's recent poll was, "How many teens see purpose for life?" On the elections front, the site www.gallup.com shows the latest snapshot, based on likely voters: George Bush 48 per cent; John Kerry 45 per cent. Another survey found that environmental advocates in the US may need to talk less about issues such as greenhouse effect and ozone layer, and switch instead to "something closer to Americans' everyday lives: their water supply." In Chennai, one may not need a survey to get at such a result.

If we can't have opinion polls on our netas, we may rather window-watch what's happening elsewhere. Six Questions is a web publisher, launched in March 2004, and its goal is simple: "Entertain people on a daily basis."

For this, it posts polls such as: "Best way to find a date? Bar, Internet, through friends, work/school, or everyday activities." Another: "What's the perfect number of children to have? 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 or more."

By forcing people to choose one of the radio-buttons on the poll-page, the site perhaps is helping its viewers to keep their neurons busy.

The last word is yet to be said about opinions and their polls. A worthy quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, to wrap: "We should never let ourselves be burnt for our opinions; we are not that sure of them."

While that justifies keeping mum on opinions, auditors may consider incorporating the Nietzsche quote in their reports to save their skin.

SayCheek@TheHindu.co.in

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