University at Buffalo researchers found that audit offices with a higher share of partners and managers had fewer misstatements across more than 41,000 audits. The association bears on how offices staff teams and on the PCAOB's proposed disclosure of partner and manager involvement.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives
- Insufficient
- Confidence60
Eileen Taylor's 163-person study finds respondents cast as investors rate CEO crimes as more material than those cast as auditors. Because the PCAOB defines materiality by what a reasonable investor would weigh, the split suggests auditors apply that test more narrowly in their own role.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives40
- Confidence40
PCAOB named five standard-setting projects, including fraud and going concern, after its first public comment request on standard setting. Its most recently completed project, amendments easing the new QC 1000 quality-control rule, is the best evidence of which way the five will be drafted.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives45
- Confidence62
French Hill and Tom Cotton want broker-dealers with fewer than 150 employees and no custody of client assets out of the PCAOB audit regime that Dodd-Frank extended to every registered dealer in 2010.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption18
- Hype gap+12
- Incentives72
- Confidence55
The August 24 letter to Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC copies the SEC's chairman and its enforcement director. Two authors who come at climate policy from opposite directions say its independence theory refutes its own benchmark.
Reality
- Evidence52
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives65
- Confidence46
Average programs run $2.3 million and 15,000 hours while 57% of internal audit functions hold headcount flat. The diligence is now about evidence layers, not demos.
Reality
- Evidence30
- Adoption22
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives78
- Confidence38