Materiality

https://www.aicpa.org/content/dam/aicpa/interestareas/frc/assuranceadvisoryservices/downloadabledocuments/exposuredrafts/materiality-discussion-paper.pdf How do you set materiality in an attestation engagement where subject matter cannot be quantitatively measured? A new AICPA discussion paper highlights ways practitioners might navigate these challenges. If you have practical experience in this area, read the draft and share your feedback by Oct. 31.

SEC and internal controls

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-sec-threatens-to-go-soft-on-internal-controls-11566158647

GE and fraud?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/ge-plunges-after-whistleblower-calls-it-a-bigger-fraud-than-enron/ar-AAFQjYf?ocid=se


https://www.wsj.com/articles/ge-is-new-target-of-madoff-whistleblower-11565866617?mod=djemCFO


https://www.gefraud.com/

Non-Accounting Grads

From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on August 13, 2019 Accounting Firms Increasingly Hire Non-Accounting Graduates For many public accounting firms, a prospective new hire’s technology skills have become more relevant than their accounting knowledge, according to a report from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Non-accounting graduates comprised 31% of all new-graduate hires in public accounting in 2018, up 11 percentage points from when it was last tracked in 2016, according to the organization. The proportion of non-accounting graduates hired was larger than that of new hires with a master’s degree in accounting (25%), but smaller than that of hires with a bachelor’s degree in accounting (43%) in the 2017-18 school year, the study said. The report, released every two years, found that total projected enrollment for accounting programs—either bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degrees—fell 4% to 241,873 since the 2015-16 school year. The 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years saw the highest enrollment—both about 253,000—since the organization began tracking it in 1993.

Finding too many material weaknesses

https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-appear-to-avoid-hiring-auditors-with-a-history-of-critical-audits-new-research-shows-11565647355?mod=djemCFO Companies Appear to Avoid Hiring Auditors With a History of Critical Audits, New Research Shows Audit committees need to do more to prevent companies from acting on bias, according to researchers who examined data from more than 350 U.S. audit firms over 13 years

Jail for KPMG cheater

https://economia.icaew.com/news/august-2019/first-of-the-kpmg-cheats-jailed

Cognitive biases and audit quality

https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2019/aug/biases-jeopardize-audit-quality.html