Accounting Commons^™

Auditing Management Assertions: The Impact Of Sas No. 106, Deborah S. Archambeault

Accounting Faculty Publications

The Auditing Standards Board (ASB) of the AICPA recently issued eight new statements on auditing standards (SASs), which are effective for audits of financial statement periods beginning on or after Dec. 15, 2006. Included within this new set of audit standards is SAS No. 106: Audit Evidence, which provides guidance on the use of management assertions in obtaining audit evidence.

Fraud: The Human Factor, Sridhar Ramamoorti, William Olsen

Accounting Faculty Publications

Eighty percent of respondents to a National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) survey of public company audit committees felt that failure resulting from poor risk management couldn't happen to them. However, 50 percent thought it could happen to other companies.

This feeling of relative "invincibility" is similar to the statistically impossible "Lake Wobegon" effect--where "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average." Could this Lake Wobegon effect--which results from the human tendency to overestimate one's achievements and capabilities in relation to others--extend to an organization's assessment of its vulnerability to fraud …