201512 CM December

CREDIT MANAGEMENT
CM
THE CICM MAGAZINE FOR CONSUMER AND
COMMERCIAL CREDIT PROFESSIONALS
the
Editor’s
column
WHERE HAVE ALL
THE FIREMEN GONE?
WHEN I was training to be a
journalist in the early 1980s,
people were beginning to tie
themselves up in knots in
how certain roles and objects should be
described so as not to offend: Firemen
became firefighters; policemen became
police officers; and air-stewardesses
became in-flight attendants, long before
they ultimately emerged as cabin crew.
Blackboards, if you recall, similarly
became chalkboards. White boards, for
some strange reason, remained white
boards, a fact I never understood then or
now.
The National Union of Journalists
helpfully provided us with a crib sheet to
ensure we didn’t get it wrong. I wish I’d
kept it. Some of the chosen alternatives
were hysterical. Chair as opposed to
chairman was a particular favourite.
Watching senior fire chiefs and police
officers being interviewed and struggling
to use the correct terminologies was
car-crash television. It wasn’t natural. It
was politically correct nonsense that they
were obliged to follow without ever truly
believing it.
Wind forward the clock 30 years and
we are now having the same debate in
relation to debtors who, for the past few
years, seem to have been transformed
into customers in the language of debt
collection. Some will argue that debtor is
a correct accounting term, and therefore
should continue to be used. Others that a
debtor is a customer who has simply
fallen behind in their repayments. But
they are still, fundamentally, a customer.
It makes for a good and healthy debate
(see article page 28).
Whatever word we choose, we must
learn a lesson from the 80s. We should
not change an accepted terminology or
word to something different, just because
of political correctness or to tick a
regulator’s box. Neither should we use a
word pejoratively. If we truly see a debtor
as a customer whose circumstances
have changed, perhaps only temporarily,
then that has to be expressed in the way
that they are dealt with, and the respect
that they receive. It must be believed and
believable and willingly embraced.
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Alex Simmons
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4 December 2015 www.cicm.com
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