Professional Skepticism and Auditors' Workpaper

An implicit theme of this case that I want students to recognize is the contrast between the persistent and vigorous efforts of David Sokol to “get to the bottom” of the suspicious items he uncovered in JWP’s accounting records versus what Judge William Conner referred to as the “spinelessness” of JWP’s auditors. The JWP audits were similar to most problem audits in that the auditors encountered numerous red flags and questionable entries in the client’s accounting records but, for whatever reason, apparently failed to thoroughly investigate those items. On the other hand, Sokol refused to be deterred in his investigation of the troubling accounting issues that he discovered. The relationships that existed between members of JWP’s accounting staff and the Ernst & Young audit team apparently influenced the outcome of the JWP audits. Of course, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

However, the author argues that these audits have become increasingly ineffective. Identify and discuss at least three reasons why these audits are becoming less effective.

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

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

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 Model of Trust Enhancement was established to enhance and maintain the public’s trust in the accounting profession. Over the last two decades, the ethics of the accounting profession has been questioned and public trust destabilized, in particular for auditors, due to the Enron debacle. The fact that an auditing firm would assist their clients with publishing an inadequate set of financial statements shows their willingness to violate laws and regulations (Sims & Brinkmann, 2003). According to the textbook, “Because trust is essential, even the appearance of an accountant’s honesty and integrity is important. The auditor, therefore, must not only be trustworthy, but he or she must also appear trustworthy” (Duska, Duska & Ragatz, 2011, p. 116). The majority of statements filed inadequately have a substantial impact on the credibility of the accounting profession as a whole. Sullivan (n.d.10) states that a CPA must possess a high level of trust, by applying professional judgment and enhancing the three trustworthy characteristics (ability, benevolence, and integrity) when resolving accounting ethics dilemmas (slide 3).

Based on Client Confidentiality and Fraud the limited nature of review assumptions, together with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' (AICPA) customer confidentiality guideline, puts the reviewer in the position of needing to pick between procuring a job or settling on a fitting moral decision. Expert codes for U.s. bookkeeping morals are more prohibitive than those of most expert affiliations, even those for which the customer specialist benefit is decently perceived. Also, the idea of bookkeeper customer benefit has never been underpinned by the government courts including various U.s. Incomparable Court choices, which neglected to discover such a privilege. Changes in expert norms in regards to confidentiality are important

Carcello, Hollingsworth and Mastrolia tested whether PCAOB annual inspections result in higher quality financial reporting (Carcello, Mastrolia, & Hollingsworth, 2011). They compare abnormal accruals reported by audit clients before and after initial inspections by PCAOB (Carcello, Mastrolia, & Hollingsworth, 2011). If the inspections result in improved auditing, they expect to see less earnings management after the initial inspection (Carcello, Mastrolia, & Hollingsworth, 2011). For comparison purposes, they make the same observations before and after AICPA peer review inspections made prior to SOX (Carcello, Mastrolia, & Hollingsworth, 2011). They find a significant decrease in income-increasing abnormal accruals in the first and second years

“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.

a first-time in-charge to have a client contact that can help you avoid blowing the budget.

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,

Prior research on professional scepticism focused mostly on the trait perspective .But this paper by argues the mostly commonly held assumption that individual personality attributes are static. The main focus of this paper is how educational and cultural environment of a subject can make a difference in their personality variable self-construal and therefore influence sceptical judgment. There has not been any research done in this respect that involves Chinese accounting student in China and Australia. Two countries with similar accounting standards but very different educational systems. In order to challenge the assumption data was collected by using surveys from final year accounting students in both countries. Then the data was examined using the experimental research method (Ying and Patel, 2016) .And the results agreed with the hypothesis developed and literature reviewed that Chinese students in China are more inter-dependant on the self-construal variable which relates to the educational and cultural environment being an influence on it .Further examinations have been done to provide empirical evidence regarding the influence of self-construal on skeptical judgments of an individual. The paper also addresses prior theoretical limitations as well as mentions culture and educational influence has not been emphasized in the original paper adequately. The findings draws the conclusion that accounting is not just about the technical aspects .This paper also

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

Note to Students: Providing a copy of this paper does not signify that future papers will follow the exact same format.