A better way to do this?

I have about 40 Processing option values.  In my report template, Do Section, I compare BC Object Account to see if it is one of these 40 values or not.

Instead of having 40 of the below statements,

if BC Object Account equal to PO1

Or BC Object Account equal to PO2 ...etc.

I'm thinking of a better way maybe to add these 40 values into a String comma delimited String field and do a look up, kind of like an Array List in Java. What do you think?

If you agree with me, do you know of any business function to add values to a String and another business function to look it up?