The auditing profession has evolved significantly from its earliest roots of protecting the pharaohs riches. The catastrophic business failures have caused some to rethink the value of the audit. Due to lack of alternatives, the marketplace has demanded that auditors take responsibility for fraud detection and this demand has been buoyed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the new PCAOB Risk Based Auditing and new Internal Controls standards, all requiring increased performance on the part of the auditor to find material financial statement fraud. The book explores exactly what assurance auditors should be expected to provide and suggests alternatives to providing the capital markets more of what they are requiring- greater assurances that the financial statements they rely upon for investment decisions are free of material error, including fraud. The book shows how audit firms need to retool to provide access to a new breed of auditor- the forensic specialist.Â
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