Todd Richards: Business Analysis

Company’s new CAE can explain to the non-audit employees that IAD’s objective is to add values and help improve the business processes as well as company performance, which will affect each employee significantly. It is important to let all employees understand that the answers or thoughts they provide to the internal auditors will not be used against them. Moreover, establishing good relationship and providing ongoing communication with the non-audit employees can make them feel more comfortable to share their feedback and thoughts, and can reduce the “us vs. them” relationship between company’s non-audit employees and the staff of internal auditors.

To examine the issues raised when independent auditors accept key accounting positions with former clients.

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.

This assessment required students to take the role of an audit manager that is currently employed with Deep Breath LCC, a medium sized national accounting firm. This particular firm offers auditing services as well as tax services. The main purpose of my role as the audit manager is to decide and justify reasons on a new audit client acceptance. The process of accepting a new client is not a simple procedure especially during this phase where the public accounting environment is changing drastically. Intense competitive pressures among audit firms in selecting the best clients and increased exposures of litigation have driven auditors to be more prudent in the process of making decisions when accepting a new audit

Rittenburg, Larry. Johnstone, Karla. Gramling, Audrey. (2012) Auditing: A Business Risk Approach 8e. Mason: South-Western, Cengage Learning.

Auditors play an important role in the banking industry, they should help promote confidence and independence in the financial industry. The auditors work for and act as a go between the shareholders and the corporation. The auditors responsibilities is to make sure the company is in compliance, to detect fraud and report illegal acts. The recent financial crisis revealed many weakness

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).

Real Property Solutions (RPS) and Newark Community Economic Development Corporation (NCEDC), are lucky to have been served by Kevin Seawright, a popular financial and management guru. At NCEDC, he served as the Chief Financial Officer, and the Executive President. Under his leadership, and with over 14 years’ experience in finance matters, young entrepreneurs were at an advantage of receiving guidance on how to navigate new markets, and as a result, the East Coast community has acquired financial skills on how to invest wisely. Moreover, those that use his services benefit by acquiring long term strategic plans that he teaches .Early 2015,Kevin ventured into his own business called Real Property Solutions( RPS )based out of Baltimore,

3.) Strong presence in high margin health services business. In addition to UnitedHealth Group’s leadership position in the health benefits market segment, UnitedHealth Group has strong information and technology based health services platform through its business segments which is Ingenix, OptumHealth and PrescriptionSolutions. The “CNN MONEY” (2012) website states Ingenix is one of the largest health information, technology and consulting companies in the world. The UnitedHealth Group derived $2.3 billion of revenues from Ingenix which contributed $284 million (excluding $200 million in goodwill impairment and business line deposition charges) of operating profit, and an operating margin of 12.1% during FY2010.

It was pretty clear from the introduction where he was going in this talk, and he took us their in a clear and concise way. The main points were all laid out very clearly and he seemed to transition between them well. His conclusion was also pretty good, with a closing statement that made you think about what he wanted the audience to think about.

Niedermeyer, and Presha Niedermeyer. They performed surveys using internal auditors of public companies and external auditors from large and small firms. The survey questioned how auditors made ethical decisions, and they also wanted to see how internal auditors answered versus how external auditors answered. The result of the surveys showed that there was no difference in decision- making between internal and external auditors in the aspect of how major the effects unethical decisions on victims would be. The only difference between auditors in this study was how they make decisions on what is right and what is wrong. It appears that auditors that work for the Big Four have a stronger sense to determine what is right or wrong as opposed to the other auditors working in large and small firms. The study suggests that each firm adopts policies and special training to combat these

During the presentation, I found his discussion about fraud to be interesting. I liked how he started off the discussion with personal stories. Mark explained that during his career he has experienced individuals commit fraud through charging reimbursable phone expenses to multiple accounts and creating fake vendors to receive extra compensation. He explained that eventually these individuals were caught due to internal audits, which tend to focus on low risk areas. Mark noted that most of these frauds

Deborah S. Archambeault, F. T. (2008). The Need for an Internal Auditor Report to External Stakeholders to Improve Governance Transparency . American Accounting Association .

Auditors provide comfort and assurance regarding a corporation’s financial position and its financial statements. The assurance field centers upon one common trait: trust. Trust is vital to an auditor because investors must feel confident that the financial statements accurately reflect the company’s financial standing. Auditor independence is the backbone behind the perceived trust and comfort an auditor provides while examining the financial statements. If an auditor impairs independence, how can an investor ensure that he or she is relying upon accurate information? Since trust is an essential part of the auditor-investor relationship, the government and accounting oversight boards have taken several measures

Internal auditors cannot effectively provide an analysis on the company’s internal dealings as they are part of the company. External auditors, however, can observe these processes from the outside and then determine where the funds of the company and whether the dealings adhere to the regulations. Using external auditors in a company prevents conflict of interest from happening. Conflict of interest is a situation where an individual or organization has multiple interests and of those multiple interests, one could possible corrupt the motivation for an act on the other when the auditor has any kind of beneficial interest in their client’s performance. In other circumstances, there is also the threat of familiarity where auditors become