The Audit Committee as a Key Corporate Governance Mechanism

With different industry definitions and viewpoints, fraud can be a tough issue for audit committee members to grasp for oversight purposes. The legal obligations of audit committee members have intensified because their standard duty of care and loyalty to the entity has increased in light of management fraud activities.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the SEC’s influence on auditing a private company and the essential activities involved in the initial planning of an audit. Next the discussion will delve into four stages of the audit and tasks performed by the auditors as well as internal control findings and various aspects of the audit.

In 2015, the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee audited Hector School District. In the Summary of Auditor’s Results and Financial Statement Findings, the auditors did indicate a material weakness in internal control. Here, the specific requirement noted that management is where the responsibility falls for implementing sound accounting policies and maintaining internal control over financial procedures that are consistent with their own assertions found in the financial statements. The stated condition for this material weakness was that the district failed to segregate financial duties among qualified employees. Instead, one sole employee was in charge of all of the financial accounting duties. Thus, the school

However, the application of SOX has brought on regulations that public companies must put in place and follow to prohibit these unethical occurrences. One major advantage for associated with SOX is that more thorough audits are being conducted by auditing firms. Audits being conducted more thoroughly will provide accuracy and an increased reliability of financial data. This will affect taxes in a positive way and provide firms with an advantage. Causholli, Chambers, and Payne (2014) suggest that prior to the implementation of SOX in 2002, “an auditor’s opportunity to sell additional non-audit services in the subsequent year, coupled with the client’s willingness to buy services, intensified the economic bond between auditor and client, in turn reducing auditor independence and the quality of financial reporting” (p.681). The regulation of auditor provided non-audit tax services has increased the reliability of tax and financial reporting within companies. Seetharaman, Sun, and Wang (2011) explain that “in a post-Sarbanes-Oxley environment, the benefits of auditor-provided non-audit tax services (NATS) seem to manifest themselves in higher quality tax-related financial statement management assertions” (p. 677).

Auditing is a systematic process of objectively obtaining and evaluating evidence regarding assertions about economic actions and events to ascertain the degree of correspondence between those assertions and established criteria and communicating the results to interested users (Boynton & Johnson, 2006). In auditing there are many attributes that describes the auditor’s work. Elements of the Generally Accepted Auditing Standards are followed by auditors. The Generally Accepted Auditing Standards apply to financial, operational, and compliance audits. Auditing public traded companies has been effected by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. Auditors have additional responsibilities because of

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act created the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) to assume the responsibility of overseeing the auditors of public companies. The PCAOB is a private-sector, non-profit corporation. It was established to "protect the interests of investors and further the public interests in the preparation of informative, fair, and independent audit reports". (The PCAOB) Although the PCAOB is a private sector organization, it has many government-like regulatory functions. The PCAOB was created in response to an increasing number of accounting restatements by public companies during the 1990s and a series of recent high-profile scandals like Enron and WorldCom. Prior to the PCAOB, the audit industry was self-regulated

This report provides information about the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board for Dr. Mack. The information includes the history and creation of the PCAOB, its structure, and its duties in today’s accounting world.

In the United States, the 1934 establishment of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ensures that reliable and complete financial information is available to investors (Hoyle, Schaefer, & Doupnik, 2013). Since its formation, “the SEC has administrated rules and regulations created by a number of different congressional actions” (Hoyle et al., 2013, p. 552). Nonetheless, external auditors were not regulated and conducted both audit and non-audit (i.e., consulting) services for the same organization; thus, creating a conflict of interest. Moreover, board of directors were not

After further review, the article examines how there is currently an expanded cost to organizations to pay for cutting edge yearly audits, which inadvertently increases the costs to every customer. The consumer or client may view this as being unfair. The article verifies that the demonstration was intended to urge financial

The Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 enacted many new legislations including the creation of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which inspects audits of public companies, increased regulations on auditor independence, prohibiting certain non-audit activities, increased corporate responsibility of company executives and management for financial reports, timely and accurate disclosure requirements, and management’s responsibility to design and test the effectiveness of internal controls. These legislations are just a few of the key sections of the Sarbanes Oxley Act among many others and have has a great impact on public auditors and the audit process of public companies. Although many of these new requirements and regulations require more detail, time, and money to implement, they help to protect the public interest of investors and restore the public’s trust in auditors and the financial reports of corporations and business that must follow the policies the forth in the Sarbanes Oxley Act.

This was a very interesting article, in my opinion it brings to mind the derived phrase, which came first the chicken or the egg. Meaning, is corporate governance an attempt to control the results of unethical practices of corporations or is it meant to deter them. In reading this article, it is clear that certain corporations practiced unethical business behaviors for self-interest, but the questions this author have are: 1. Should corporate governance be regulated by the legislature as well as the organization and to what degree, 2. Is corporate governance, there to protect the shareholder or the stakeholder, 3. How effective is corporate governance on a global level. The need for a governance system is based on the assumption that the separation between the owners of a company and its management provides self-interest executives the opportunity to take actions that benefit themselves, with the cost of these actions borne by the owners (Larcker & Tayan, 2008).

There are numerous threats to the independence of auditors which have been identified in the multiple studies and discussions both in Australia (such as the Ramsay report, CLERP 9 Paper) and internationally by IFAC, the European Commission

The importance of audit committees increased through the years and especially from pre-Sarbanes – Oxley to post-Sarbanes – Oxley. Although, what are the responsibilities of the audit committee members? How does a Chief Audit Executive (CAE) more effectively serve their audit committee members? How do auditors communicate with audit committees? What are the requirements for audit committees? Most of these questions are inherited from what the audit committee’s best practices are.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the role of external auditing in promoting good corporate governance. The role of auditors has been emphasized after the pass of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act as a response to the accounting scandal of Enron. Even though auditors are hired and paid by the company, their role is not to represent or act in favor of the company, but to watch and investigate the company’s financials to protect the public from any material misstatements that can affect their decisions. As part of this role, the auditors assess the level of the company’s adherence to its own code of ethics.

This paper critically analyses the independence of the internal audit function through its relationship with management and the audit committee. Given the growing role of internal auditing in contemporary corporate governance and independence has gained renewed attention.