What’s your audit committee worried about?
These are the things should be keeping CFOs awake at night.
According to a survey of 150Â audit committee members, the top five concerns are:
1. Liquidity, access to capital and cash flow;
2. Risk management;
3. Financial statement issues;
4. Maintaining internal controls; and,
5. Alignment of business goals, incentives, culture, compliance, controls and risk.
The survey also showed:
- 89 percent said the financial crisis had caused their company’s board or audit committee to change the nature and scope of its oversight.
- 53 percent said that they are only or not satisfied that their board exercises appropriate skepticism about management’s risk perceptions and assumptions.
- 50 percent said that they are only somewhat or not engaged in discussing the assumptions that underlie management’s accounting judgments and estimates that might be impacted by the financial crisis.
- 38 percent said that they are only somewhat or not satisfied that management has timely and accurate financial forecast information about earnings and cash flow.
- 31 percent of the representatives from those companies that issue earnings guidance said that the audit committee has reconsidered the company’s policies regarding earnings guidance in light of the financial crisis.
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