ABSTRACT
John Campbell (Sandy) Burton took full advantage of his position as an independent academic, and as the Chief Accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to state his support for the profession—and to exhort the profession to a higher level of service. He gave a speech one time that characterized the SEC as a grain of sand in the oyster, the oyster being the accounting profession. He worked as a staff auditor with Arthur Young & Company from 1956 to 1960, completed a master’s degree in finance, and in 1962 earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University. The financial community recognized the value of this young associate professor by asking him to chair what became known as the Seaview Symposia, in 1968 and 1971. With one notable exception, the SEC, under Sandy’s accounting leadership supported the private sector’s accounting standard-setting bodies. Sandy was co-editor of Accounting Horizons from 1989 to 1991.
