Richard Kleiner

“Your actions define you. What you are will show in what you do.” (Thomas Edison), was one such quote that stopped me in my tracks. It was then that I started to think about how, in the 21st century, the word ‘accountancy’ neither reflects ‘who we are’ nor ‘what we do’ at Gerald Edelman. ‘Accountancy’ does not solely define our actions or our mindset.

As I began to share this realisation with colleagues, we started to ask ourselves, ‘If we are not ‘accountants’, who are we, what do we do and, perhaps more significantly, why we do what we do?’.

Everything that we do is driven by the desire to go above and beyond, the ambition to help our clients beyond their expectations and to help turn their dreams into reality.

This is also why we have our Purpose, which is to strive for every interaction to be a positive one. Our Purpose drives everyone’s behaviours at GE and it comes before everything else. This is because we truly value relationships. We build them. We enjoy them. We thrive on them.

We want to exceed expectations and deliver genuinely exceptional experiences all the time – whether that be through the technical advice that we offer to clients or the close support that we give our clients and team when they are going through a tricky time.

We instil in our team a desire to deliver professional advice that is unconfined by traditional boundaries and to build partnerships that challenge, inspire and make our client’s businesses fly. We have a view that proactive advice should have no boundaries or constraints. That is why we have changed the saying “break the walls of the box down” to “What box?”. Pure thinking beyond boundaries is our approach and mantra!

Wherever possible, we do not define ourselves as ‘accountants’. We are, instead, united in our ambition to go above and beyond to ensure every individual and business we work with has the very best experience, and opportunity to fulfil their ambitions.