Summary of 2005 Midyear Auditing Conference
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| The Astor Crowne Plaza Hotel, site of the 2005 Midyear Conference. |
The 2005 Midyear Meeting of the Auditing Section was held in New Orleans on January 14-15. The meeting was preceded by the 25th anniversary conference of the AJPT and the Doctoral Consortium. The meeting started with keynote speakers Cynthia Cooper and Glyn Smith, who were Vice-President and Senior Manager of Internal Audit of WorldCom when they uncovered the largest corporate fraud in US history. Cynthia and Glyn talked about how their team discovered the fraud as well as the challenges they faced in relaying their discovery to upper management. Peppering their speech with both humor and touching anecdotes, Cynthia and Glyn also talked about some measures that would reduce the likelihood of future corporate fraud and exhorted the audience to fulfill its role in influencing future accounting professionals.
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| Linda McDaniel with keynote speakers Cynthia Cooper and Glyn Smith, former Vice-President and Senior Manager of Internal Audit of WorldCom. |
The meeting also included a plenary panel on "Auditor Independence," co-sponsored by the Auditing Standards Committee and moderated by Roger Martin, chair of the committee. Participants included Gary Holstrum, Deputy Chief Auditor of the PCAOB, Zoe-Vonna Palmrose, Professor at the University of Southern California and Jean Wyer, PricewaterhouseCoopers Partner. There were also separate panel sessions on global convergence of auditing standards, including speakers from the GAO, IAASB, ASB and PCAOB (sponsored by the Practice Advisory Council); corporate governance in management education (co-sponsored by the IIA and education committee); AJPT editors' perspectives on auditing research (sponsored by the research committee); and meeting the IT skills and knowledge required of entry level auditors (sponsored by the education committee).
Thirty-three papers were presented in the concurrent sessions, including three education cases. Another seventeen papers were at the research roundtable. Total attendance was 306, up from last year's 281. Fifty students attended the Doctoral Consortium, with several more on a waiting list.
Section award winners were: Distinguished Service in Auditing: Tim Bell; Outstanding Auditing Educator Award: W. Steve Albrecht; Notable Contribution to the Auditing Literature Award — Kathryn Kadous; Innovation in Auditing and Assurance Education Award — Tim Bell and Ira Solomon; Doctoral Dissertation Award — Shawn Davis and advisor, Ron King.
Copies of the presentations made at the doctoral Consortium, along with copies of many of the papers and presentations featured at the meeting are available at:
http://aaahq.org/audit/midyear/05midyear/2005AuditingProgram%20v.5.htm
Many thanks are due to the KPMG Foundation and Bernie Milano for their faithful sponsorship and support; all reviewers, discussants, moderators and panelists; Dee and Fran and staff of the AAA; and The Ivey Group/Audit Analystics.com and McGraw-Hill/Irwin for co-sponsoring receptions.
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| Linda McDaniel thanks Mark Peecher and Billy Soo, co-chairs of the 2005 Midyear Conference Program Committee. |