Abstract The article focuses on the financial reporting to shareholders. According to the author, it is startling to realize how very little the ordinary run-of-the-mill stockholder knows about the financial affairs of the company he partly owns. The author places substantial blame of this regrettable affair on the shoulders of the accounting profession. In the presentation of financial facts accountants continue to cling blindly to tradition, to the classical forms of balance sheet and income statement as the vehicles for disclosure in annual and other reports and in prospectuses. It is extremely easy for a lay investor to mistake a dollar statement of earned surplus for actual cash on hand. He is likely to make the mistake of believing that, should he purchase an investment in the company, he would be buying a share in an earned surplus having a present value equivalent to the amount set forth in the balance sheet. These and other conventional accounting concepts, reflected in the accumulation of figures called the balance sheet, add up to an unassembled jigsaw puzzle to the non-professional.