Zurtlespace

As a bookkeeper, you would think my job involves a lot of math–and I suppose, in a way, it does–but most of the job is detective work–noticing things; small things and minor details that don’t seem like much but, over time and taken in aggregate, can add up in surprising ways. This sort of situation can change your perspective on things you knew, or thought you knew. More than that, it can give you insight into things you never really noticed.

Today I caught a minor error in one of our deposits that required an immediate adjustment, not because it was a huge discrepancy but because it would be easier to take care of it while the item in question was still in the working memory of everyone involved.

Notice, that I said, ‘adjustment’, not ‘correction’. It never really occurred to me that there was any purpose to this use of diction beyond precision; accounts are often adjusted for reasons other than errors. But maybe there is an additional reason for this particular choice in terminology. The difference between ‘correction’ and ‘adjustment’ is one of implication. A mistake is corrected. An adjustment is simply…adjusted.

It’s like the difference between active and passive voice. A correction means someone made a mistake. An adjustment means–as Reagan might say–a mistake was made.

Passive voice, which emphasizes the object acted upon (the mistake that was made), is less accusatory than the active voice, which implies an actor (someone made a mistake). This is why the passive voice, along with sesquipedalian loquaciousness, is the favored refuge of the cornered or contrite politician.

Perhaps it is the result of the accounting trade being intrinsically linked to the office environment, where tempers flare at the slightest provocation. A more diplomatic way of telling someone they made a mistake has probably saved more than a few people’s careers.