A high-profile former member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has provided a frank glimpse into the bureaucratic clashes over Auditing Standard No. 5—including revelations that the Securities and Exchange Commission fought aggressively to gut AS5’s main provisions.
In an exclusive interview with Compliance Week, Kayla Gillan says the SEC “pushed, pushed, pushed, and really tried very hard to get something different than what [the PCAOB] ended up producing.” The Commission lobbied so hard to eliminate the central requirement that auditors examine a company’s internal controls—a provision the PCAOB ultimately retained—that Gillan feared the PCAOB’s role under Sarbanes-Oxley might be undermined.
