Red Flags & the Inquisitive Accountant/Accountants' Non-Disclosure: Recent Cases & Controversies

Although “inquisitiveness” is not explicitly required by the AICPA and MICPA Code of Professional Conduct, generally accepted auditing standards require a certain level of follow-up when "red flags" appear ... especially during an attestation engagement. The principles of integrity, honesty, and objectivity articulated in the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct imply a certain level of curiosity, truth-seeking and inquisitiveness, but these ideals are often difficult to achieve when accountants are under the real pressures of time, budget and deadlines. This seminar considers these difficult accounting and ethics issues. Participants discuss actual court cases as they sort through these issues together.

Accounting is an art. It involves the abstraction and communication of information. The value of accounting information, in turn, is often discussed in terms of the extent of disclosure and transparency. All well and good, it seems, until someone decides that a particular set of financial statements is erroneous to the point of being misleading or deceptive. This seminar offers an overview of the theoretical notion of disclosure, followed by a discussion of recent cases and controversies where financial statements (and the accountants associated with them) and challenged in court. Theory tends to clash with practice in these cases. Participants are invited to sort out what is proper disclosure and what is not.