Reviewed by William Yellin St. Francis College
This book contains fifteen papers covering the concerns and often differing viewpoints of the Symposium participants regarding the following topics: Auditor Independence: Its Historical Development and Some Proposals for Research; The New AICPA Audit Commission—Will the Real Questions Please Stand UP?; Con-trolling Audit Quality: A Responsibility of the Profession?; Relationship of Auditing Standards to Detection of Fraud; A Decision Theory View of Auditing; Setting Standards for Statistical Sampling in Auditing; The Sample of One: Indispensable or Indefensible?; The Case for Continuation of Mandatory Independent Audits for Publicly Held Companies. The participants represented a cross section of the profession, namely academia, public accounting, and governmental agencies. Each topic was covered by two papers of differing viewpoints except for the last topic listed above which was covered by one individual. First, a brief topical history mixed with the personal viewpoints of the writer was presented. Then the second discussion paper was presented addressing itself to the personal viewpoints of the author of the preceding paper.
In many cases, the viewpoints reflected the occupational back-grounds of the writers. For instance, the initial paper on independence was presented by an academic who suggested at one point that a strengthening of auditor independence might be furthered by paying the auditor from public funds. The second paper, pre-sented in direct response to this paper, opposed this view as an impractical solution because of the wide disparity of the accounting and auditing services being rendered. This response was written by a member of the public accounting profession that one might expect to espouse this premise.
The symposium was organized by having all papers distributed in advance to all participants so that preparers only made brief comments on their paper. Time was then allotted to the writer of the discussion to reply, followed by an open discussion by all the re-maining participants. The papers were all thoroughly prepared and citations to previous applicable literature were made for historical background. However, I think that accounting personnel representing the private companies which are the subject firms of an audit should have been represented, in order to supplement the academic, public accounting, and governmental viewpoints.
I believe that readers of this publication would have also been interested in reading some of the points made by the participants when the topics were opened to general discussion. I suggest inclusion of selected general discussions in future publications of this symposium.
The presentations contemporary to 1974 are still contemporary today. There were suggestions for quality control programs within the public accounting profession as well as continuing education programs. These are still current topics and the profession has moved forward with peer review programs within the American Institute of CPAs and mandatory continuing education programs in various states. The public accounting profession itself is con-tinually answering many of the questions raised in this 1974 sym-posium. This publication will provide researchers and members of the profession an excellent source document summarizing the questions facing auditors today.
