What are the five areas in the accounting profession?

Had you visited St. Charles, Illinois (about fifty miles southwest of Chicago), back in 2001, you would have noticed an impressive training and conference center owned by Arthur Andersen (then one of the so-called "Big 5" public accounting firms). Had you gone in, you could have toured a room dedicated to the history of Arthur Andersen, a proud firm with eighty-nine years of corporate history. You'd have learned how a company started by a young accounting professor from Chicago grew into one of the world's largest public accounting firms, with twenty-eight thousand employees and annual revenues of over $4 billion.