Tammy Whitehouse

There can be no guarantees in auditing. On that much, the financial community seems in agreement. But how much assurance can auditors provide when offering their opinion on the soundness of financial statements? How can or should that assurance be measured? That’s a question emerging as corporate failures and incidents of fraud continue to unfold, […]

According to a leader in forensic accounting, more must be done to help accountants to find fraud at public companies. Wells “Accountants don’t currently learn what motivates fraudulent conduct, how to spot the signals, how to prevent fraud from occurring and much more,” said Joseph Wells, founder and chairman of the Association of Certified Fraud […]

As companies wrestle with how best to value stock options, some are experimenting with using ranges instead of set figures for their assumptions about term and volatility. Assumptions are significant because they are the basis for establishing a value for stock options, which becomes the basis for the ultimate expense that is charged to earnings. […]

Accounting rulemakers are looking for new ideas on how best to book assets and liabilities when nagging uncertainties or probabilities make their accounting less than straightforward. The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued an “invitation to comment” that poses a host of questions on how companies should book assets and liabilities when some measure of […]

Accounting regulators published a stinging 2004 inspection report on KPMG, the first of the Big Four firm reports to be made public, followed late last week by a similarly unflattering report on Deloitte & Touche. A few weeks earlier, regulators published their findings on a mid-tier firm, Mayer Hoffman McCann, which reads much like the […]

Accounting regulators are planning to give auditors some new advice in two forms: a generalized report on its 2004 inspection findings—providing blanket advice on auditing for fraud and internal control reporting—and a question-and-answer piece on auditing accounting related to stock option expensing. “We’ve been analyzing the results from our inspections of firms to determine what […]

Accounting regulators are planning to give auditors some new advice in two forms: a generalized report on its 2004 inspection findings—providing blanket advice on auditing for fraud and internal control reporting—and a question-and-answer piece on auditing accounting related to stock option expensing. Carmichael “We’ve been analyzing the results from our inspections of firms to determine […]

Long anticipated guidance on how to scale the market’s most accepted internal control framework to a small-company setting is now targeted for “mid-October,” perhaps Oct. 18, according to Joseph Carcello, director of research for the University of Tennessee’s Corporate Governance Center and a member of the task force drafting the new guidance. Carcello The Committee […]