I've always though an Accountant is someone who makes business life easier - someone who could be really useful to a business owner...why have your expectations been lowered and what would make a perfect accountant for you?
First of all, I haven't met all accountants, so please forgive any generalisations.
In the beginning, we used to have an accountant that would save us money. Our bookkeeping was at best very sloppy. We then started to take more control over our business and wanted to know precisely when we were about to go bust. Even though we started taking on more of the bookkeeping work ourselves, we noticed that the accountant's fee wasn't going down.
Now we do all our own financial analysis (cash flow, P&L, debters reports, forecasts etc...) and it's great. I like being in control, knowing what our tax liability is etc, and not finding out once a year. We're gradually weaning ourselves away from using an accountant, and next year will probably be accountant-free.
I would prefer an accountant to look over the books, but it's just too expensive for us right now.
(For me, cheap would mean not paying thousands for a few hours work)