> The specific lie discussed was the idea that granting options was not somehow an "expense" and could be excluded from the accounts.

Stock options for the company's own stock are kind of weird because the company can issue its own stock, which puts them in a much different position than someone selling uncovered calls.

An uncovered call is a potentially unbounded liability. If you issued someone options to buy 10,000 shares for $10 each and then the price went up to $1000, you could be on the hook to have to buy $10M in shares and then sell them for $100,000, i.e. you'd take a $9.9M future loss, and the risk of that is a significant liability.

Whereas if you have 10,000 shares and agree to sell them for $10 each and then the the price goes up to $1000 before they pay you, you don't actually owe anyone that extra money, you just failed to make the $9.9M gain you otherwise would have. It's the same as if you'd sold (or issued new) shares for $10 immediately. But we don't generally book "opportunity cost of selling shares for the current market price" as an expense, do we?

That's not what the quote in the article is:

> Our lecturer, in summing up the debate, made the not unreasonable point that if stock options really were a fantastic tool which unleashed the creative power in every employee, everyone would want to expense as many of them as possible, the better to boast about how innovative, empowered and fantastic they were.

That's saying that it's stock options themselves which are the bad idea. The lie is in how they are expensed or not expensed. The point the accountant is making is that if stock options were a good idea, they could be expensed, thus not needing the lie.

But nowadays, stock options are expensed, right there in public, and they are still considered a good idea.