A Brief Note On Phar Mor 's Team

Appendix A.2 also lists several factors that could provide opportunities for management/employees to commit fraud. One factor that could lead to fraud is if, “There is ineffective monitoring of management as a result of: domination of management by a single person or small group without compensating controls.” The auditors should have taken notice of the lack of controls and segregation of duties with respect to Phar-Mor’s

The factor that plays the greatest role in determining auditor independence is independence in mind. Auditors may or may not appear to be independent, but if the auditor is truly independent in mind, then the auditor can remain objective and unbiased. The profession should consider tightening the Code of Professional Conduct to address the issue of an audit team member knowing a close friend that holds any position at the audit client. If this scenario arises, the firm can still audit the client, but the audit member with the close relationship won’t be able to be on the audit team.

Auditor Independence contains 9 parts which stablish standards for external auditor independence, so it will have limit conflicts of interest, also contains that an approval requirements for new auditor, audit partner rotation, and auditor reporting requirements. Also restrict auditing organization from providing non audit services for the same clients they audit.

Arthur Andersen (AA) contributed to the Enron disaster when it has failed to the management by failing to have Enron establish and enforce its own internal control. There has been flaws to AA‘s internal control. There has been assumption that AA partners were too motivated by revenue recognition thus, overlooking several criteria when providing their services to Enron. Additionally, AA also recognised the retention of audit clients as vital and a loss of any clients would be disadvantaged to an auditor’s career. In AA internal control, the person who is able to make most of the decisions is the person who is most concerned about the revenue or losses of the client’s company.

The first is that raised cost through the additional time spent and additional set up costs as well. It affects in both auditors and managers of firms. For the manager, ‘New auditors, they argue lack sufficient knowledge regarding firm-specific risks and, as a consequence, audit failures would likely increase.’ (782, purple) Supposing firm does not need to change related audit company, auditors might know better about firm specific expertise as well as they might not be fully understand of financial statements. For the auditors, if compulsory audit firm radiation implemented under the government regulation, new audit firms should investigate new client to analyze their characteristics and management flows. Therefore it could be concluded that will be high costly because of additional costs such as human resources and time to catch up compared with keeping one audit firm

The successor auditor is the auditor who is considering accepting or has already accepted engagement with the new firm. Communication between the predecessor and the successor is important. This information can bring about many issues such as “the predecessor auditor and the client may have disagreed about accounting principles, auditing procedures, or similarly significant matters” (PCAOBUS.org, 2013). The successor auditor should initiate the communication with the predecessor. The reason behind the successor auditor initiating the communication is to obtain valuable information that can lead to whether or not they should accept the engagement. The successor auditor may only request reasonable information to the predecessor auditor pertaining integrity of management, disagreements in accounting principles, auditing procedures, and or other significant matters. In addition, successor auditor can establish communication with audit committees or other with equivalent authority regarding “fraud, illegal acts by clients, and internal control related matters” (PCAOBUS.org, 2013). There are laws of confidentiality that the predecessor must abide by. The predecessor must maintain confidentiality at all times. Due to this confidentiality laws

Title II of Sarbanes-Oxley covers Auditor independence, it contains nine sections all covering different aspects of auditors’ independence. Section 201, Services outside the Scope of Practice of Auditors, details what activities are not allowed to be performed by auditors for a client if they are to be performing an audit for that client. Detailed in section 201 as prohibited in order to maintain auditor independence are legal and expert services unrelated to the audit, any investment advisement, investment banking services, management or human resource functions, internal audit outsourcing services, actuarial services, appraisal or valuation services, financial

For any audit engagement APES 110 section 100.5 sets out five fundamental principles that all audit members must abide by (Gay & Simnett 2012, p. 86). They must act with integrity, objectivity and not allow bias. They need to ensure professional competence, confidentiality and comply with the relevant legislation (Gay & Simnett 2012, p. 86). As such one of the principle requirements for auditors is auditor independence from their clients. In Harris-Scarfe’s case, this was not possible because the deputy chairman used to be a partner at Price Waterhouse, the firm’s auditors (Buchanan 2004, p. 69).

3. A) If I were put in this situation as an equity investor, I would absolutely pursue legal actions against the auditors. If there was a

The company should hire it’s own internal auditor’s to ensure that the staff understand the company’s accounting procedures. This also helps the external auditor as it give the external auditor another viewpoint when assessing fraud risks. The internal auditors are apart of those charged with governance and that helps take the pressure off of the external auditor if a fraud should be discovered.

Another threat to the independence of the auditors is a phenomenon which took place around 3 or 4 decades ago. During that time the number of firms which required audits stopped expanding, the codes that prohibited advertising accounting firms were abolished, which enabled all these firms to steal market from each other. Furthermore, a lot of audit bodies engaged into consulting, bookkeeping assistance, investigation and tax advices. This trend resulted in

There were many issues in this case but one of the main issues that stood out was the fact that Andersen there was a conflict of interest because Andersen was the auditor and consultant for Enron. There are positive attributes when auditing and consulting at the same time for a client such as building a relationship with the client and promotes business; allows the auditor to become familiar with the clients’ business environment, and reduces the overall cost of the client. However, when a firm audits and consults for their client, the audit/consulting firm works so closely to the client that it makes ethical decisions very difficult to make and the auditors lose objectivity and become partial due to the conflict of interest.

Auditors don 't particularly favor to turn down current or prospective clients, especially when they own stock % in the company or if it is well-known company like Shell however being worried about their reputation and future works, they try not to audit dishonest clients, because it can have dire consequences for the auditor. In the case if auditor becomes involved with bad clients, it is necessary to weigh revenues earned from desirable clients against potential problems.

The lack of independence for external auditors will lead to the neglect of auditing risks (William R.K., 2003), which are the main reasons for the failure of certified accountants and professional accounting organizations. The consequence of the external auditors deprived of independence would be very serious. And there are many cases, which aroused by the failure of external auditors and most are related to the lack of independence. One famous example is the bankruptcy of Enron and the role played by its external auditor, Arthur Andersen (Todd, S., 2003). Arthur Andersen was once one of the biggest accounting companies in the world, and was canceled for the involvement in the Enron bankruptcy scandal.

This includes the indirect ability of management to influence the career prospects of internal auditors, as well as the budget and planning of the internal audit function. This is exacerbated by internal auditors themselves using the function as a stepping stone to advance their career objectives. It also can be argued that the independence theory may be lost in such a culture, especially if it is combined with people within the organization perceiving internal auditors as partners, thereby subjecting the internal audit function to pressures threatening its independence, rather than recognizing the internal audit function as an independent assurance function("A Critical Analysis Of The Independence Of The Internal Audit Function: Evidence From Australia: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal: Vol 22, No