INTHEBLACK June 2026 - Magazine - Page 16
MEMBER PROFILE
and therefore higher profit.
While Miller tells the story as a minor case
study, its lesson is far greater. Accounting on
its own, he says, does not guarantee insight
or understanding. It has to be connected
to operations, behaviour and context.
When those ingredients are in place,
management accounting does so much
more than track performance. It explains it,
challenges it and can be used to predict it.
“If you do not have good management
accounting, you go broke,” Miller says.
“Sometimes I would be introduced to clients
who would say, ‘The more we sell, the bigger
our losses’. That is a clear sign that your
direct costs are greater than the selling price,
and a good management accountant knows
immediately when your pricing is wrong.”
This is the shift that excited Miller
throughout his career — a change in
viewpoint from hindsight to foresight,
from reporting outcomes to influencing
them. It is where accounting becomes
a strategic function.
THE POWER OF SIMPLICITY
During his time with the public accounting
firm as a 21-year-old, Miller was told by his
mentor — Melbourne insolvency practitioner
Ernest Harding Niemann — to move out
of public accounting and get his feet wet
in a “real business”.
The lessons learned during his time
with the woollen mills, which employed
over 500 people, were immediate and
consequential. However, before experiencing
true success, he had to learn powerful lessons
in communication.
To have a measurable effect within
a business, the information gathered
by management accountants must be
understood by all who are involved in the
decision-making process. It is at this point,
Miller says, that many accountants struggle.
In his early days at the mill, he was not
immune from this challenge. Miller produced
detailed reports for senior managers that
contained information that was accurate
16 INTHEBLACK June 2026
and comprehensive. But originally, those
reports were ineffective. The solution,
he discovered, was not more data, but less.
“I reduced the amount of information
in those weekly reports from 10 variables
to just three key ones,” he says. “Suddenly,
I got their attention.
“To work out the key variables worth
communicating, I first had to become
a listener, which my wife and kids say
is still an issue for me,” Miller says. “This is
very important in working out what it
is that decision-makers really need to know.”
That adjustment changed everything.
As a result, his managers began to engage
with his work and their decisions improved.
Miller’s role shifted from observer to
contributor as clarity drove his influence
within the organisation.
That was 70 years ago, but still accounting
and business education — a field in which
Miller spent much of his career — remains
heavily and almost exclusively focused on
technical knowledge, he says. Interpersonal
skills such as communication, empathy and
persuasion receive little attention.
“You are communicating information that
is terribly important, but unless you can sell
the value of that information, you are failing,”
Miller says. “I think in MBAs they start
to look at that sort of thing. But that is,
on average, 10 years too late.
“I was lucky enough to have insightful
parents, an insightful employer and an
insightful mentor, so the evolution for me
was quite natural. It is just about information
that is conveyed in a way that the recipient
can absorb it. I had too many variations each
week for the senior managers at the woollen
mills, and when I lessened it to three per
week, they were interested. So often it is
a matter of keeping it simple.”
During the investigation period for his
PhD titled Training for a profession: The early
years in accounting, Miller discovered that
coaching in interpersonal skills during
the first few years of any profession leads
to a more satisfying career. “If you do not have
