Summary of 2006 Auditing Midyear ConferenceLos Angeles, CaliforniaBy Mark DeFond and Todd DeZoortThe 2006 Auditing Midyear Conference was held in Los Angeles on January 12-14, 2006, at the Hilton Universal City at Universal Studios. The meeting was held jointly with the American Accounting Association's International Section and was preceded by the 7th annual Auditing Section Doctoral Consortium. The meeting included outstanding plenary sessions. Friday morning's session, entitled "Global Standards in our Profession: A Look at the Horizon", focused on international standard-setting initiatives. David Brown, International Federation of Accountants' Public Interest Oversight Board (PIOB) member and former Chair of the Ontario Securities Commission first discussed the PIOB's initiatives and interaction with other oversight bodies around the globe. Next, John Kellas, Chair of the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB), discussed IAASB initiatives and international standard setting within the European Commission. Jim Sylph, Technical Director of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), moderated the session. The Saturday morning session was titled "The Academy Awards Engagement". Brad Oltmanns, Member of PricewaterhouseCoopers' U.S. Board of Directors and Lead Partner on the Academy Awards engagement discussed this unique balloting engagement, mixing detail about the engagement's unique risks and methodology with interesting anecdotes from his experience interacting with celebrities at the event.
The meeting also included four separate panel sessions. The Auditing Standards Committee sponsored a session on globalization issues affecting standards setting, including speakers from the IAASB, IFAC, PIOB, and PCAOB. The Education Committee sponsored a session on audit education for the post-Sarbanes audit environment, including panelists from Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The Practice Advisory Council sponsored a session focused on how large auditing firms are reinventing themselves as they move away from self-regulation, including panelists from Crowe Chizek, Grant Thornton, and KPMG. Finally, the Research Committee sponsored a session exploring two PCAOB research synthesis projects involving risk assessment and fair value auditing. Thirty-six papers were presented in the concurrent sessions, including three teaching cases. Another 37 papers were presented at the Research Roundtable session on Saturday morning. Total attendance was 373, including 268 registrants for the Auditing Section and 105 registrants for the International Section. As in prior years, the Doctoral Consortium had a capacity group of 50 students. Section award winners were:
The conference program and copies of many of the papers featured at the meeting are still available at: http://aaahq.org/audit/midyear/06midyear/2006AUD_program.htm. We are very grateful to the many people who helped make this conference work. First, we want to thank the KPMG Foundation and Bernie Milano for their faithful sponsorship and support of the AMC. Second, we thank the 2006 AMC Program Committee, including Mark Beasley, Julia Higgs, Karla Johnstone, Terry Neal, Mark Peecher, and Billy Soo. Third, we thank Wayne Thomas and Donna Street from the International Section. Fourth, we thank our friends at the AAA, including Kathy Casper, Beverly Harrelson, Diane Hazard, Dee Strahan, and Peggy Turczyn. Finally, we thank all of the authors, reviewers, discussants, moderators, and panelists who helped make the program possible. |
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