Depends if you're using standard or no-gap sequence implementation. Check out this function in openerp/addons/base/ir/ir_sequence.py:

def _get_number_next_actual(self, cr, user, ids, field_name, arg, context=None):
    '''Return number from ir_sequence row when no_gap implementation,
    and number from postgres sequence when standard implementation.'''
    res = dict.fromkeys(ids)
    for element in self.browse(cr, user, ids, context=context):
        if  element.implementation != 'standard':
            res[element.id] = element.number_next
        else:
            # get number from postgres sequence. Cannot use
            # currval, because that might give an error when
            # not having used nextval before.
            statement = (
                "SELECT last_value, increment_by, is_called"
                " FROM ir_sequence_%03d"
                % element.id)
            cr.execute(statement)
            (last_value, increment_by, is_called) = cr.fetchone()
            if is_called:
                res[element.id] = last_value + increment_by
            else:
                res[element.id] = last_value
    return res

Using no-gap implementation, the current sequence should be listed directly in the table in ir_sequence. Otherwise, using something like pgAdmin, you can just look directly at the sequence value under "Sequences" -> "ir_sequence_<sequence id="">". Or, referring to that function, a SQL query like:

select last_value from ir_sequence_041;

Why you aren't seeing the updated number on the configuration page is odd. Something else must be going wrong there, but I don't know what. Using updated server source code?