Difference Between Necessary and Sufficient Conditions

The Department of Philosophy of Texas State provides this excellent differentiation between a condition that is necessary and a condition that is sufficient:

"A necessary condition is a condition that must be present for an event to occur. A sufficient condition is a condition or set of conditions that will produce the event. A necessary condition must be there, but it alone does not provide sufficient cause for the occurrence of the event. Only the sufficient grounds can do this. In other words, all of the necessary elements must be there."

They further explain that, when you assume that a necessary condition of an event is sufficient for the event to occur you are committing a causal fallacy.

This is the problem: accountants creating and/or modifying financial report models.

This is a problem of (a) control and (b) enabling business professionals to have that control. Solving the problem is hard but very possible with deliberate, rigorous work.

If you know the story of Samuel Pierpoint Langley and Orville and Wilbur Wright and how the Wright brothers beat the better funded Langley to the goal of “controlled, sustained flight”; then you will understand how the small guys can prevail over the goliaths.  Paraphrasing from the University of Houston, Cullen College of Engineering, The Engines of our Ingenuity podcast:

* * *

Langley attempted flight on October 7th, 1903. His huge 54-foot-long flying machine had two 48-foot wings -- one in front and one in back. It was launched from a catapult on the Potomac River, and it fell like a sack of cement into the water. On December 8th he tried again. This time the rear wing caved in before it got off its catapult.

Just nine days later, the Wright brothers flew a trim little biplane, with almost no fanfare, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Their advantage was that they'd mastered the problem of controlling the movement of their plane, and they'd preceded their work with four years of careful experimentation with kites and gliders.

* * *
The Seattle Method, or something like the Seattle Method such as the forthcoming OMG Standard Business Report Model (SBRM) is necessary for the effective exchange of business information.  Control is necessary and that control needs to be in the hands of business professionals.  Proof of this is my 10+ years of careful experimentation related to general purpose financial reporting. The culmination of all that work is my Seattle Method documentation. It provides what is necessary for XBRL-based digital financial statements to fly.

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