A handful of high-profile legal flaps in recent weeks should serve as a wake-up call to public companies that they need to make their own determinations about whether their audit is being delivered by a truly independent auditor.
Auditor independence rules are the responsibility of auditors to follow, but companies have perhaps the greater burden and will be left to clean up the mess if an audit is blown by a discovery of possible bias. “Maybe a lot of companies overlook this, but it is the company’s responsibility to have audited financial statements by an independent auditor,” says Kelly Bossard, managing director at FTI Consulting. “If something goes awry, it is the company, not the auditor, that is left in the lurch.”
