Curious: how often in your field are people harassed out of work by politically motivated complaints?
Around here, restaurant owners are very vulnerable to that kind of harassment - they can literally be put out of business just by people complaining to the health department, with no real basis to the complaints. Its one thing that keeps restaurant owners out of politics.
Not that often, since it is a very formal matter to sue a registered accountant over here. It costs like 50 euro to complain or something and the accountant can lose his title from it.
Yeah, 50€ will stop the drunk at the pub from filing a complaint on his mobile for a lark, but in the greater scheme it’s no barrier at all for people intent on serious harassment.
the accountant can lose his title from it.
That’s almost always on the table with complaint investigations against licensed professionals of all kinds.
The bigger trick is: who are the regulators that execute the decision making process, how onerous is it to fight it, etc. A lot of what goes down around here on the “bad side” of all that is that certain actors familiar with the system will develop relationships with the regulatory body and launch complaints sufficient to significantly harass license holders (or any regulated person) just enough to really bother them, but not quite enough to trigger a fight with lawyers in the courts and appeals processes. In a competitive arena like running a restaurant, the harassment can be expensive and time consuming enough to tip the balance between profitable, and shutting down.
If you file a complaint with an instance like the NBA in this instance it will not go directly to the person who you complained about. They should stop the harassment.
In the case of accountants, the rules and regulations already make us write down a lot of our work and why we made certain decisions. If something is not written down, it is going to be hard to defend.
Yes in a restaurant it is different, but generally harassment is pretty rare, at least with the restaurants I have or had as clients. None really saw it as an issue. You just ban them, kick them out, call the cops if it really becomes bad or just deal with the couple bad reviews.
Curious: how often in your field are people harassed out of work by politically motivated complaints?
Around here, restaurant owners are very vulnerable to that kind of harassment - they can literally be put out of business just by people complaining to the health department, with no real basis to the complaints. Its one thing that keeps restaurant owners out of politics.
Not that often, since it is a very formal matter to sue a registered accountant over here. It costs like 50 euro to complain or something and the accountant can lose his title from it.
https://www.nba.nl/tools-en-ondersteuning/publicaties/2025/jaaroverzicht-klachtencommissie-nba-2024/
Yeah, 50€ will stop the drunk at the pub from filing a complaint on his mobile for a lark, but in the greater scheme it’s no barrier at all for people intent on serious harassment.
That’s almost always on the table with complaint investigations against licensed professionals of all kinds.
The bigger trick is: who are the regulators that execute the decision making process, how onerous is it to fight it, etc. A lot of what goes down around here on the “bad side” of all that is that certain actors familiar with the system will develop relationships with the regulatory body and launch complaints sufficient to significantly harass license holders (or any regulated person) just enough to really bother them, but not quite enough to trigger a fight with lawyers in the courts and appeals processes. In a competitive arena like running a restaurant, the harassment can be expensive and time consuming enough to tip the balance between profitable, and shutting down.
If you file a complaint with an instance like the NBA in this instance it will not go directly to the person who you complained about. They should stop the harassment.
In the case of accountants, the rules and regulations already make us write down a lot of our work and why we made certain decisions. If something is not written down, it is going to be hard to defend.
Yes in a restaurant it is different, but generally harassment is pretty rare, at least with the restaurants I have or had as clients. None really saw it as an issue. You just ban them, kick them out, call the cops if it really becomes bad or just deal with the couple bad reviews.