Decoding Financial Statements: The Secret to Making Smart Business Decisions
Everyone recognizes the importance of financial statements. Yet, if an executive or Board Member struggles to make sense of the financial measurements or finds herself searching for the right questions to ask when using the numbers to make the best business decision, this workshop will be of great value to her.
In this session the participants will:
- Understand how financial statements measure value creation or value destruction.
- Acquire strategies for asking the right questions about the numbers. Different financial statements require different strategies.
- Examine the four most important numbers in the financial statements and why they are key to every organization’s financial success.
- Discuss current issues Corporate and Private Boards face today with consideration given to financial risk oversight and how you can add value to the company while demonstrating your duty of care.
Presenter: Marian Powers
Adjunct Associate Professor of Accounting Information and Management
Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University
Marian earned her Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Illinois at Urbana. She
has served on the accounting faculty of the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern
University, the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Lake Forest Graduate School of
Management. Since 1987, she has been an adjunct professor of accounting at the Allen Center
for Executive Education at Northwestern University specializing in teaching financial reporting and
analysis to executives.
She is also co-author of several college accounting textbooks and in-depth cases on financial
analysis. Her research has been published in The Accounting Review, The International Journal of
Accounting, Issues in Accounting Education, The Journal of Accountancy, The Journal of Business,
Finance and Accounting and Financial Management among others.