Messy accounting is like navigating a tangled forest — hard to find your footing, and easy to lose direction. Messy accounting doesn’t usually appear as one big collapse. It creeps in slowly, one small breakdown at a time, until leaders realize they can’t fully trust the numbers in front of them. A variance here, a delayed report there, a lingering question from an investor — none of these on their own feel catastrophic, but together they form a pattern that undermines clarit