johnhemming wrote:Its an interesting question as to in what circumstances accountants are not responsible for a failed audit. The idea of the audit is to check for the accounts being wrong.
The rules on audit are so loose that audit is largely a cash-creation scheme for auditors, rather than a serious oversight of company finances.
In almost every referral to the receiver someone says "But why didn't the auditors see that coming" and the response from the auditors is almost invariably "Well fancy that, but under rule xx.X.xx we didn' bother with that."
You may well ask "who watches the watchers?", and of course the City is laden with regulations and committees. Whose standard comment is "Whatever".
You may think I'm a tad over-cynical, but can anyone cite more than one example* in the past 10 years of auditors being brought to heel?
*One in 10 years would simply be window dressing; two would be interesting, and three, of course, would be draconian.