"All Business Data is Intentionally Misleading

All too often, we demand an accuracy from accounting that it does not possess.

Numbers in business are not like numbers in the hard sciences. Accounting is more like a language than the measurement of a physical constant, and like all languages, words and rules change over time.

This comic strip by Scott Adams humorously captures the idea. Imagine Wally saying "All language is intentionally misleading" and he would sound less like an office slacker and more like Umberto Eco.