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- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By Jose Tabuena2014-01-22T00:00:00
A term of art in the audit profession that is tossed around but not well-understood is “reasonable assurance.” What does it actually mean when an audit report attests with reasonable assurance that the financial reporting or internal controls are reliable?
Accountants, auditors, their clients, and even regulators generally acknowledge that it is impossible to assert with absolute certainty that an event will or will not occur or even whether or not it has already occurred.
All professions accept that some form of judgment is involved when rendering an opinion, and that those judgments aren’t always perfectly accurate. In the U.S. criminal justice system, for example, a very high burden of proof—“beyond a reasonable doubt”—is required to convict an individual, yet glaring mistakes still occur under this system. Even in the world of science, where research, carefully controlled experiments, and peer-reviewed results are expected to lead to a closer approximation of truth, presumptions are in continual flux and can be upended by new evidence.
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News and analysis for the well-informed compliance or audit exec. Select an option and click continue.
Annual Membership $499 Value offer
Full price one year membership with auto-renewal.
Membership $599
One-year only, no auto-renewal.
2024-12-05T15:51:00Z By Aaron Nicodemus
Regulations are sure to be rolled back under President Donald Trump, but the question is which regulations, and how much? Is your organization as prepared to respond when regulations are loosened as it was when they were tightened?
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A company culture geared to “win business at any cost” encouraged employees of New York-based aerospace manufacturer Moog to pay bribes in India to win contracts, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged.
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Chinese authorities banned PwC’s Chinese unit from performing audits in the country for six months, labeling the subsidiary’s flawed audit work as complicit in the failure of giant property developer Evergrande.
2024-06-12T01:46:00Z By Kyle Brasseur
Erica Williams was reappointed to a second term as chair of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board after an ambitious first three years in the role that have seen the agency work to update many of its standards deemed outdated.
2024-06-03T17:35:00Z By Kyle Brasseur
Software company Autodesk said it won’t restate several years of financial statements following an audit committee investigation into potential accounting misconduct.
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