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This is an author produced version of a paper published in Critical Perspectives on Accounting. This paper has been peer-reviewed but does not include the final publisher proof-corrections or journal pagination. Abstract. In o rganisations, a ccounting-understood broadly as calculative practices-i s claim ed to serv e as a critical v ehicle wh en in troducing form s o f in dividual fin ancial resp onsibility. Whereas most prior accounting research has been preoccupied with asserting this claim, this paper opens a n opportunity t o exam ine t he limitations of acc ounting a s a t echnology o f responsibilisation. It does so by moving the empirical focus beyond the borders of people's work settings and into the private sphere of everyday life, investigating governmental efforts to turn high school stud ents in to fin ancially resp onsible citizen s. Th e analysis, in formed b y fram ing th eory, reveals th at the efficien cy of accoun ting i s co nditioned by p eople's calcu lative un derstanding. Hence, i n situations where i ndividuals are ex pected t o lack this basic calculative c ompetency, accounting is presumed to be inappropriate as a means of introducing financial responsibility. This has implications for re-con sidering ho w the relatio n b etween accounting and resp onsibility is constituted.

The constitutive ability of accounting to produce effects, influencing people's minds and behaviour, has been widely acknowledged in accounting literature. This paper argues, however, that in order for accounting to have an impact on people, its figures needs to be interpretable to its intended users. But what happens in situations where people are considered as inhibited in reading and interpreting financial information? This paper investigates how financial accounts are presented to individuals believed to be impaired in their ability to make sense of its figures. It does so by moving the empirical focus beyond the borders of the professional organisation and into the private sphere of everyday life, examining how a televised financial makeover show literally represents financial information in order to turn its participants into financially responsible citizens. The paper's empirical findings give reasons for problematising the conditions under which accounting is able to affect people, concluding that, without taking people's ability to interpret financial accounts into consideration, the possibilities of the accounts having an impact on their users risk falling short.