Case Study Of Professional Skepticism

PCAOB describes professional skepticism as a general duty of care that needs to be applied by the auditor throughout the duration of the audit engagement. Professional skepticism involves the auditor having a clear and questioning mind regarding the assertions that are presented by management or other client personnel. The auditor is instructed to not take the words or data presented by management as sufficient and appropriate audit evidence but rather the auditor needs to thoroughly audit the evidence with a questioning mind to achieve reasonable assurance about the persuasiveness of the evidence. Skepticism is composed of three elements; auditor attributes, mindset and actions. The PCAOB

Relevant professional standards for this assignment are AU Section 230 “Due Care in the Performance of Work,” AU Section 326 “Evidential Matter,” AU Section 330 “The Confirmation Process,” and AU Section 339 “Audit Documentation.”

Legitimacy in accounting practices is ensured by the check and balance of having independent auditors from registered public accountant firms reviewing financial practices. The report features eleven sections and these sections pertain to accounting overview, independence of auditors to reduce interest conflicts, corporate responsibility, financial disclosures, tax returns, criminal fraud and various elements of white collar criminal activity (107th Congress

Confirmation is the process of obtaining and evaluating a direct communication from a third party in response to a request for information about a particular item affecting financial statement assertions. It describes the concept of assessing inherent and control risks, determining the acceptable level of detection risk, and designing an audit program to achieve an appropriately low level of audit risk. The auditor uses the audit risk assessment in determining the audit procedures to be applied, including whether they should include confirmation. The greater the combined assessed level of inherent and control risk, the greater the assurance that the auditor needs from substantive tests related to a financial statement assertion.

Summary: The objective of this article is to clarify the significance of professional skepticism as an essential part of the auditor’s mindset, and to consider the reasons why approaching an audit with an attitude of professional skepticism is becoming increasingly important. The following are three case studies that will concentrate your consideration on what it takes to be a skeptical auditor when performing journal entry testing.

The PCAOB is charged with establishing and enforcing auditing, quality control, ethics and independence standards and rules for public company accountants. The SEC will not accept an audit report from an accounting firm that is not registered with the PCAOB. Thus, SEC reporting companies must engage the services of a registered public accounting firm. The PCAOB is funded by new fees imposed on publicly-traded companies based on their market capitalization – the fees range from as little as $100 for the very smallest companies to more than $1 million for a handful of the largest companies.[4]

The behaviors and attitudes of the auditor’s was very professional in exercising due diligence and proper training in the following manners. Oloff tried to contact the attorney several times by phone, left five messages and when she inquired about voice mail and email received a no answer to both types of technology. She also tried to set an appointment but was fended off of this type of communication as well. Corliss was put off about speaking with the previous auditors by the owner citing that there were personality conflicts and his concern was they would speak ill of the company. Corliss reminded him that it is required part of the procedure to accept them as a client. Gabelli investigated the going concern aspect, in

A review and an audit report are both a form of an attestation engagement. A Review, however, is less in scope so it provides a moderate level of assurance on the financial statements. It is considered a “sniff” of an audit, which comparatively provides reasonable assurance that no material misstatements occurred. Since a review deals with a limited scope, it does not provide the basis for expressing an opinion on the presentation of the

“Outside auditors play a crucial role in our nation’s financial system. As the watchdogs of corporate accounting, they are supposed to protect investors” (Hilzenrath, 2010). The question is how effective are these outside auditors in protecting investors? When you think about the failures that have occurred: Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco, and Global crossing to name a few, one would really question the effectiveness of these outside auditors. As a result of these failures, Congress pass the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002. This act in turn created the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) to police the outside auditors and ensures they are protecting the investors.

12-9: According to AU 240, auditors should exercise professional skepticism during the audit and discuss the risks of material misstatement due to fraud (Wells, 2013, p. 330). The auditor should also discuss the implications of the audit with the appropriate level of management. Finally, the auditor should obtain sufficient evidence to determine if material fraud exists and what the impact on the actual financial statements is (Wells, 2013, pp.

2. Auditors are required to consider evidence obtained and accumulated throughout the audit and make an overall evaluation as to whether substantial doubt exists with respect to the ability of the client

Fraudulent, erroneous, and illegal acts committed by a public company, usually at a managerial or executive level, have been a very serious problem for many years and have prompted development of strict and updated regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, in an attempt to prevent these occurrences. Unfortunately, these new or updated regulations are not enough to prevent these acts from happening, thus not alleviating the auditors of their responsibility to detect fraud. Some methods that management and auditors can employ to prevent and detect fraud, errors, and illegal acts are: improving knowledge, improving skills,

As auditors, they have the responsibility of not only requesting a confirmation, but they should also follow up on necessary procedures to make sure that this process is accurately completed. Their duty is to be able to have control over this process from beginning to end in order to be able to rely on the evidence requested.

Investigation and discipline of registered public accounting firms for violations of relevant laws or professional standards.

Professional skepticism practices as neutral but discipline approach to detection and investigation. Per SAS No. 1 it suggests that an auditor neither assumers that management is dishonest or assumes unquestionable honesty. Professional skepticism requires fraud examiners to “pull on thread” in which means Red flags are warning signal or something that demands attention or provokes an irate reaction. Red Flag symptoms of fraud may be divided into at least six categories: unexplained accounting anomalies, exploited internal control weaknesses, identified analytical anomalies where non