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It is an honor to serve as President of the Auditing Section for 2009-2010. My commitment to you as members is to work diligently to continue the progress the Section has made under the terrific leadership of Audrey Gramling, Mark Peecher, Ray Whittington and the many other outstanding individuals who have served the Section in this role.
2009 Annual Meeting
Many of you joined the thousands of AAA members attending the Annual AAA Meeting in New York. It was a great event for the AAA and the Auditing Section. Tim Louwers and Kenny Reynolds did a fantastic job coordinating the Auditing Section’s program. This year there were 182 papers submitted to the Auditing Section – a 20% increase from 2008 – with 104 being selected for presentation in concurrent sessions. The Section also accepted proposals for five panel sessions. In addition to the panelists and paper presenters, the Section’s part of the program involved the work of 32 moderators, 80 discussants, and several hundred reviewers. Thanks to all for their efforts.
In conjunction with the AAA meeting in New York, The Center for Audit Quality (CAQ) held a half-day symposium on Sunday, August 2. The symposium was attended by some 60 people – half auditing researchers and half partners responsible for the audit practice and methodology from most of the nations largest 10 audit firms. The symposium had three main objectives:
- To help reverse the declining degree of dialogue and collaboration between leading audit practitioners and audit researchers.
- To provide a venue for academic researchers to share the results of their studies and explore with leadership-level practitioners how those results apply to audit practice.
- To demonstrate the commitment and leadership that will be necessary to help ensure that audit practitioners and audit researchers collaborate on issues that drive improvements in audit practice and quality.
Based on the success of this symposium, the Center for Audit Quality and the Section are planning to hold another symposium in conjunction with the 2010 AAA Meeting in San Francisco.
Audit Boot Camp
In June the Section conducted its first “Audit Boot Camp” The 3 day event was designed with two types of faculty members in mind: recent doctoral graduates who do not have auditing experience, but will be teaching auditing courses at their new university and faculty members who currently teach auditing courses who do not have recent auditing experience. The purpose was to give participants and opportunity to be come acquainted with the basics of current audit practice, particularly where practice has been changing. Coverage included various topics including audit planning, client acceptance, internal controls, risk, materiality and substantive testing. The program was extremely successful, enrollment, which was capped at 40, quickly filled and a number had to be turned away. Those that attended gave the program excellent evaluations and reviews.
Based on the first Boot Camps success, the section with offer another Boot Camp this coming June. Watch for the announcements this Spring.
Webinars
This past year the Section explored the possibility of providing webinars to Section members. Two webinars were conducted. The first was conducted by Mark Beasley, who spoke on COSO’s Project on Monitoring Internal Controls; the second was by Joe Carcello discussed his recent PCAOB activity from his perspective as a member of the PCAOB’s Standing Advisory Group.
The section has now received approval from NASBA to award CPE credit for all future webinars delivered by the section. The first webinar for which CPE was available was conducted this fall by Pamela R. Murphy on Research and Teaching Opportunities on Fraud Prevention and Detection. The plan going forward is to conduct five to six webinars per year. If you have an interest in conducting one of these webinars contact Susan B. Hughes, chair of the CPE committee, shughes@uvm.edu or Jeffrey Cohen, chair of the Research Committee, cohen@bc.edu.
KPMG Continues its Generous Support
We recently received the news that the KPMG Foundation Trustees have approved a three year extension of the Foundation’s support of the Section’s Mid-Year Conference and Auditing Doctorial Consortium. This support for the 2011, 2012, and 2013 Conferences and Consortia provides a critical financial basis to for the Section to continue fulfill its mission of fostering excellence in the teaching, research and practice of auditing and assurance services. Thanks to KPMG, the KPMG Foundation Trustees, and Bernie Milano, President of The Foundation, for this vote of continued confidence in the Section.
San Diego 2010
Register now for the 2010 Auditing Section Mid-Year Conference to be held January 14-16 at the Westin Hotel in San Diego. Jennifer Joe and Susan Shu have arranged an excellent selection of plenary speakers, panels, and paper presentations for the conference. Plenary speakers include Christopher Cox, Past Chairman of the SEC, and Dr. Arnold Schilder, the Chair of the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board.
This year’s pre-conference workshop continues the Excellence in Audit Education theme of our past two pre-conference workshops. This year the workshop has been coordinated by Mark Peecher and is entitle Equipping Audit Students to Make Professional Judgments. This is one of the most significant issues facing the auditing and accounting profession today as changes in the accounting framework requires an ever increase amount of judgment as is discussed by Guy Moore, Senior Advisory Partner with Deloitte, in the “Views from the Profession” column in this issue of The Auditor Report. The column provides a great introduction to the topic. The workshop begins at 12:30 Thursday January 14.
We continue our tradition of holding a Doctoral Consortium prior to the conference. Brian Mayhew, the Consortium chair, has an exciting program planned for January 14 that PhD students working in auditing and related areas will not want to miss.
Looking forward to seeing you in January in San Diego.
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