The focus on adjusted earnings accounting is encouraging companies to “cherry-pick” their results and create a distorted picture of their true results, warns a Canadian money manager.

“I’d love to be able to send something to my clients that says, ‘Here’s your return for the last quarter – by the way, I’ve removed the performance of my six worst stocks,’” said John Zechner, Chairman and Founder of J. Zechner Associates, in an interview with BNN. “It’s not the real number.”

Zechner cited the recent adjustment Rogers Communications (RCIb.TO) made to its earnings after shuttering its Shomi streaming television venture with Shaw Communications. In January, the communications company reported net income of more than $1.5 billion for 2016. However, that number drops to $835 million once you exclude the $140-million Shomi writedown, expenses for stock-based compensation, restructuring costs, impairment charges or income tax on those adjusted items.

And, as another example, SNC-Lavalin Group (SNC.TO) reported adjusted net income of 49 cents per share on Thursday. However, that did not include $39.8 million in a “net loss on disposals” and $87.8 million in restructuring costs. Once those costs are included the profit drops to just one penny per share.

Investors need to go through results and ask themselves if they are comfortable with the adjustments, according to Zechner. “You know what? If you have six quarters of a non-recurring loss, its not non-recurring,” he said.

Instead of focusing on so-called adjusted earnings, Zechner suggests investors keep an eye on cash flow to get a sense of the health of a company’s ongoing operations.