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AUDIT & ASSURANCE

Traditional Audits Don’t Deserve Premium Billing

Relevance empowers staff to do their best work because an audit isn’t reduced to checklists.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

If we can’t demonstrate to our clients that our work is relevant, then the audit will go the way of the dinosaur. Relevance underpins the other attributes.

MORE: Four Basic Understandings Every Auditor Must Master | Put the Ethics Code to Work for Your Clients and Your Firm | Turning Audit & Accounting into Assurance & Advisory | WANTED: Great Audit Mentors | Is Audit in Crisis Because of Definitions? | Stop Sending the Wrong Message to Audit Teams | Closing the Audit Expectations Gap
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Relevance is not a one-time event. It’s a continuous process woven through everything your firm does. You build it one step at a time. This should be done with every audit, so this becomes core to the fabric of the firm’s culture.
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AUDIT & ASSURANCE

Four Basic Understandings Every Auditor Must Master

Make your audits more relevant and provide value-added insights and services to your clients.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

The question professionals should always ask is, “Are we leaving the profession better than we found it?” So, let’s ask: Are we leaving the audit profession in better shape than it was when we inherited it?

MORE: Put the Ethics Code to Work for Your Clients and Your Firm | Turning Audit & Accounting into Assurance & Advisory | WANTED: Great Audit Mentors | Is Audit in Crisis Because of Definitions? | Stop Sending the Wrong Message to Audit Teams | Closing the Audit Expectations Gap
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Right now, we’re not providing value, but I honestly believe it’s not too late. The future of audit is ours to create or a future that will happen to us, and not necessarily a future we would prefer.

It will take leadership to change the future of audits. We have to take ownership of the process.

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Make Audits Matter: Live CPE with Alan Anderson

HOT TOPIC: Blake Oliver discusses “Transforming Audit for the Future” with author Alan Anderson.

Anderson joins host Blake Oliver at Earmark Webinars+.

Making Audit Matter Again: The Future of Assurance
Feb. 28, 12 PM ET, 9 AM PT
Learn more | Register

CPA Trendlines

The audit is at a crossroads. Commoditization and compliance mentalities have diminished its value. Now, auditors face an existential crisis.

How can assurance stay relevant?

Join Alan Anderson, author of the newly published “Transforming Audit for the Future,” and Blake Oliver as they tackle pressing questions on audit’s failure to innovate and chart a new direction focused on value-added assurance.

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AUDIT & ASSURANCE

Put the Ethics Code to Work for Your Clients and Your Firm

Accountant searching for laws

Future audits will yield far more information much faster.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

Some CPAs say that auditors can’t provide any kind of advice without harming our independence and violating our professional ethics. But remember, the pillars of our ethics as CPAs are objectivity and integrity. Independence is the measure chosen by our profession to measure our objectivity.

MORE: Is Audit in Crisis Because of Definitions? | Stop Sending the Wrong Message to Audit Teams | The Big Issues in Audit: Frustration, Inconsistency and Technology | Talent Retention: Five Tips for an Audit Adjustment | The Ten Financial Controls That’ll Make You a Hero | Five Cash Reports You Can’t Live Without | When an Audit Is a Great Thing
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If we remind ourselves of those pillars and make our decisions from that viewpoint, we’ll be fine. You can offer advice and options for a client, but they must be the ones who make the management decisions. The decision-makers at the client must be the ones who choose an option and who implement that option. We can’t choose and we can’t implement.

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AUDIT & ASSURANCE

Turning Audit & Accounting into Assurance & Advisory

To remain relevant, we must change the meaning.

By Alan Anderson
Transforming Audit for the Future

As I see it, audit is at a crossroads. On one path, audit will keep going the way it has for the last decade or so. It will become so irrelevant and commodified it will vanish. Fees will drop so low that no one will be able to afford to be in the audit business. Plus, technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain will be able to do what we’re doing now, only better, faster and cheaper. That might not happen for another 15 years, but that is coming.

MORE: Is Audit in Crisis Because of Definitions? | Stop Sending the Wrong Message to Audit Teams | The Big Issues in Audit: Frustration, Inconsistency and Technology | Talent Retention: Five Tips for an Audit Adjustment | The Ten Financial Controls That’ll Make You a Hero | Five Cash Reports You Can’t Live Without | When an Audit Is a Great Thing
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

But there’s another solution — we can drive change positively for our profession. This change won’t happen overnight.  I want to encourage us to really think about driving that change because we can influence it quite dramatically.

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