The Paramount Onus Of An Auditing Professional

In this case, there are several conspirators who is involved in the fraud receiving punishment from either SEC or federal government. Robert Levin, the AMRE executive and major stockholder, and Dennie D.Brown, the company’s chief accounting officer, were subject to the punishment in the form of a huge amount of fine by the SEC and the federal government. This punishment came from reasons. After AMRE going public, the company have the obligation to publish its financial reports but its performance did not meet expectation. The investigation by SEC shows that Robert took the first step of this scam, fearing the sharp drop of AMRE’s stock price because of the poor performance of company. He abetted Brown, to practice three main schemes to present a false appearance of profitable and pleasant financial reports. Firstly, they instructed Walter W.Richardson, the company’s vice president of data processing, to enter fictitious unset leads in the lead bank and they originally deferred the advertising cost mutiplying “cost per lead” and “unset leads” amount, so that they deferred a portion of its advertising costs in an asset account. The capitalizing of advertising expenses allowed them to inflate the net income for the first quarter of fiscal 1988. Secondly, at the end of the third and fourth quarters of fiscal 1988, they added fictitious inventory to AMRE’s ending inventory records, and prepared bogus inventory count sheets for the auditors. Thirdly, they overstated the percentage

The Enron and WorldCom scandals were arguably the incidents that permanently changed the procedures for accounting controls. In response to these incidents, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 was passed. Once the knowledge of these scandals was made public, a number of subsequent accounting scandals were discovered in public companies such as Tyco International, HealthSouth, and American Insurance Group. In addition, a then-employee-owned company, Post, Buckley, Schuh & Jernigan, Inc. (dba PBS&J, now known as “Atkins North America, Inc.”), was also hit by a similar accounting scandal. Henceforth, a case study of PBS&J is presented where we will examine the fraudulent transactions that

For instance, the funds owed the company by the Rigas family went undisclosed in the statements, because the management at Adelphia deemed such disclosure as being “unnecessary” (Barlaup, Hanne, & Stuart, 2009). Given that Adelphia was a publicly traded company, the purposeful non-disclosure caused potential investors to rely on financial records that were grossly misleading. The inevitable result was the investors continued to inject money into a company that had all the appearances of profitability and sustained growth, but that was, in reality, rapidly becoming insolvent. Moreover, lending institutions also relied on the “independently-audited” financial statements, and they were more than eager to loan the company money, given Adelphia’s presumed state of financial “profitability.”

The auditor must remember that all information collected during the audit needs to be sufficient enough to further the audit process. The information must not only possess the two qualities, relevance and reliability, but it should also test various assertions. For instance, in the audit of Walmart, the auditor should make an attempt to acquire information such as financial statements from the company’s bank, as opposed to acquiring the statements from Walmart’s management. Taking such crucial information from Walmart’s management will put the reliability of that information into question. It is possible that management may manipulate the financial statements, so that they are more appealing to the public and investors. Management may do things

When auditing a publicly held company, auditors need to observe principles. The ethical principles of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Code of

According to an article in the CPA Journal, the accounting profession has long contended that an audit conducted in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards (GAAS) provides reasonable assurance that there are no material misstatements contained within financial statements. Suggest at least two (2) alternative methods that auditors can use to provide a more concrete level of assurance to investors. Provide support for your responses with examples of such methods in use.

“ In order to prevent fraudulent financial reports and statements, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants(AICPA) has created ethical standards” (Ethical standards in a financial statement, 2011). These standards aim to make financial professionals accountable for their accounting practices. This includes the integrity of financial reporting and ensuring financial reporting is done fairly and factually. Financial accountants and professionals should maintain professional integrity, objectivity, and independence to reduce the risk of resulting legal action, loss of profits, and a poor reputation if improper financial reporting is done (Ethical standards in a financial statement, 2011).

GAAS requires an auditor to write a report to express an opinion in regards to the financial statements, taken as a whole, or notate that an opinion cannot be expressed based on the facts given (Generally Accounting Auditing Standards, 2016). When the auditor is unable to express an overall opinion, the auditor should list the reasons why in the auditor’s report. When an auditor’s name is associated with financial statements, the auditor should clearly indicate the character of the auditor’s work, if any, and the degree of responsibility the auditor is taken, in the auditor’s report. (“Generally Accepted Accounting Principles,” n.d.). In 1999, Grant Thornton issued an unqualified audit opinion. Grant Thornton acknowledged the firm’s duty to “obtain reasonable assurance about whether the bank’s financial statements are free of material misstatement” and the opinion stated that the firm had found such assurance (Grant Thornton LLP v. the OCC, 2008). The auditor’s opinion should provide reasonable assurance that the financial statements presented are fair in all aspects. The audit’s opinion does not have to have absolute assurance, however, it should give a fair view to follow the financial reporting framework (Auditor’s Report-What is an auditor’s report?, 2015). The unqualified audit opinion raised many questions with our client because for many years, our client, OCC, had cited Keystone Bank with many

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).

This subject company in this case study is WoolEx Mills. The top management team at the Mills had to act fast to prevent the accusations charged upon them, so that they may venture deep into the United States market. In the process, they had to act in a way that will present the company’s financial statements; cash flows in a way that they did not show any suspicious fraudulent activities. The type of fraud in this case study is known as manipulation of accounts which involves the act of offering the accounts in the way they are not in reality.

According to Luke, Nwaobia and Theophilus (2016) said that the audit profession should intensified the monitoring of the professional performance to evaluate disciplinary issues to keep their members in practice with appropriate. The provisions of ISA 706 requires the auditor should present more frequently with management and governance of the entity (IAASB, 2015).

Auditors having the appropriate competence and capabilities to perform the audit, and follow ethical requirements, and maintain professional skepticism throughout the audit.

The meaning of the expectation gap involves argument concerning the contradictory meaning of what an audit is to user of financial statement, the public and the audit profession. Expectation gap is the difference between what the public assumes to be the role of audit and what the audit profession claim their role is in carrying out the audit function. . All the theories above describe the expectations the stakeholders have of the auditors, including protection against fraud, warning of future insolvency, general re-assurance of financial well-being, safeguards for auditor independence and understanding of audit reports. Although these expectations seem to be rather natural, however, an audit expectations gap does exist based mostly on the diversity of views about the audit function. The gap exists between what the public expects the auditor to do and what the auditor can and should do. Several suggestions were made to narrow the expectations gap, as well as providing statutes in order to describe audit functions especially concerning the responsibility to detect and report errors and fraud.

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The purpose of the memo is to describe the auditor 's responsibility to consider fraud in financial statements by following eight steps to make sure the financial statements are free of material misstatement. The memo begins with an elaboration of fraud and the concepts related to it. A list of the steps is then provided before finally giving an outline of the various generic red flags of fraud that can act as a lead to the auditor in identifying fraud.