When this project began in August of 2001, the world of risk management for accountants was a sleepy, predictableñyou might even say boringñplace. But with the fall of the mighty Andersen after Enron, Worldcom, and other scandals, that's all changed. Of course, there have always been risks involved in the accounting trade. Few understand those risks better than the insurance companies that underwrite professional services like accounting.

Continental Casualty Company, a CNA insurance company, insures more than 23,000 CPA firms in the United States. Certified Public Accountants are generally required to complete 40 hours of continuing professional education each year to maintain their licenses. To supplement live seminars that it offered, CNA decided to publish its own educational CD-ROM.

The principal challenge for us was how to deal with programming and designing the CD-ROM while waiting for the writing to be complete. The plans were vast, calling for nearly 500 screens of text, hundreds of images, and 90 minutes of videos, but many of the elements would not be delivered until late in the process. In addition, during production, the tax laws were being rewritten and the Sarbanes-Oxley accouting reform bill by Congress in response to the dotcom bust and corporate governance scandals.

To stay on top, we developed a database-driven approach that broke all of the content down into its component parts. The programming was finished months ahead of the writing. As the text and the videos became available, we simply dropped those files into pre-defined folders on the CD and they automatically were placed on the right screen and in the right template.

Angle Park subcontracted this project from video producer/director Roy Cohen, who directed the videos. David Hammond wrote the copy, which made a very difficult subject readable and often very entertaining.

In addition to nearly 500 pages of text, this CD contains 90 minutes of video.



Every page is created by streaming images and text into pre-defined templates from external files.



Interactive exercises test accountants' knowledge throughout each module.