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 Thank you again for providing me the opportunity to serve as the Auditing Section President for 2008–2009. I continue to be so impressed by the number of our members who are willing to work diligently on behalf of the Auditing Section. As a result of the efforts of so many of you over the years, the Auditing Section has accomplished a great deal and has a number of new initiatives in process. I will use this column to highlight some of those accomplishments and new initiatives.
2009 Midyear Conference
The Midyear Conference was very successful. Brian Ballou and Chris Hogan did an outstanding job as the Co-Chairs of the Conference Planning Committee. Brian and Chris were assisted by Jennifer Joe and Susan Shu, who coordinated the manuscript review process for the 2009 Conference and will Co-Chair the 2010 Midyear Conference. Thank you to all of the individuals who acted as moderators, discussants, and reviewers for the conference. Our thanks also go out to Dee Strahan's on-site team for their valuable assistance.
Finally, the Auditing Section is indebted to the KPMG Foundation for its continued generous support of our Midyear Conference and Auditing Section Doctoral Consortium. While we missed seeing Bernie Milano, President of the KPMG Foundation, at the Midyear Conference we were very pleased that Bea Sanders and Manny Fernandez were able to join us.
See the various articles on the Midyear activities for a summary of the many highlights of this Conference.
2009 Auditing Section Doctoral Consortium
The Auditing Section continued the tradition of hosting a Doctoral Consortium just prior to the Midyear Conference. Ph.D. students attended presentations by some of the finest audit researchers and were also able to interact with those researchers during breakout sessions during the Consortium. Mark Zimbelman, assisted by Brain Mayhew, planned the 2009 Annual Doctoral Consortium. The purpose of the Consortium is to stimulate students' research by exposing them to the latest ideas from leading researchers in auditing. The Consortium also provides opportunities for networking with other Ph.D. students interested in auditing, established auditing researchers, and journal editors. By all accounts, this year's Consortium clearly achieved this purpose. Thanks again to the KPMG Foundation for its generous support for this year’s Consortium. This Consortium is so important to increasing Ph.D. students' interest in focusing on auditing in both their teaching and research activities.
Section Awards Announced
Auditing Section awards were announced at the Midyear luncheons on Friday and Saturday. At Friday's luncheon, Gary Holstrum was awarded the 2009 Distinguished Service Award, and Bill Messier and Stan Biggs were each awarded the 2009 Outstanding Auditing Educator Award. Those of us who know these individuals certainly recognize that they are all very deserving of these awards.
At Saturday's luncheon three other awards were announced. Steve Salterio and Alan Webb accepted the 2009 Notable Contributions to the Auditing Literature Award on behalf of themselves and their coauthor, Mike Gibbons, for their paper titled " Auditor-Client Negotiation about the Client's Financial Reporting.” The Outstanding Dissertation was awarded to Jonathan Stanley who received a plaque and a monetary award of $2,500. His dissertation chair, Todd DeZoort, also received a plaque. For the first time, the Auditing Section provided an award to the Outstanding Ph.D. Student Paper submitted to the Conference. This award was presented to Jaime Schmidt who received a plaque and monetary award of $1,500 for her award winning paper titled “Financial Statement Misstatements, Auditor Litigation, and Subsequent Auditor Behavior.” Jaime is a Ph.D. student at Texas A&M where her advisor is Mike Wilkins. Congratulations to these outstanding researchers!
Second Annual Auditing Education Workshop --Enhancing Audit Education
A primary objective of this workshop is to provide a platform in which academics and practitioners can exchange ideas and work together to strengthen audit education. A special thanks to Ray Whittington for his planning and leadership of this event. We greatly appreciate the many academics and practitioners who served as panelists and presenters throughout the workshop. The feedback from the Workshop was very positive and we are planning on offering a third workshop in conjunction with our 2010 Midyear Conference. If you have ideas for the 2010 Workshop, please contact Mark Peecher who has agreed to plan this event.
In case you missed the 2009 workshop, the materials from the workshop, including an update on the state of existing audit coursework, and some very interesting auditing cases and classroom tools dealing with professional skepticism, ethics, auditor independence, fair value, and IFRS will be available at the AAACommons. The program for the workshop is available at http://aaahq.org/meetings/2009AUD_workshop.htm.
Officer Elections
At the Annual Business Meeting, Jay Thibodeau, Secretary, announced the results of the Fall 2008 officer elections. Steve Glover (BYU) was elected to serve as Vice President-Academic, and Chris Hogan (Michigan State University) was elected to serve as Treasurer. Chris and Steve will assume their offices at our Auditing Section Luncheon in New York in August 2009. Congratulations to these new officers! We look forward to working with them on the Executive Committee.
Future Elections
During the Annual Business Meeting, the Executive Committee and attending Section members had a discussion regarding whether the Auditing Section should continue to have contested elections. Many of the AAA Sections do not hold contested elections, but rather have elected nominating committees present a slate of officers to the membership. Before the Auditing Section could move to non-contested elections, there would need to be a change in the Section’s by-laws. The Executive Committee will be drafting a change to the Section by-laws to allow for noncontested elections. The proposed change will have a number of features including: (1) the election of a nominating committee by the Section members, and (2) the provision for there to be a contested election, which includes a mechanism for allowing Section members to have their names placed on the ballot, thereby requiring a contested election. This proposed change to the by-laws will be put out to the membership for a vote in Spring 2009. If you have any questions about this potential by-laws change, please feel free to contact me. The Executive Committee wants to allow the Section’s members a formal voice on this issue, as it is an issue that has been raised by many Section members who question the benefit of continuing to have contested elections.
2009 Annual Meeting
Planning for the Auditing Section activities at the 2009 AAA Annual Meeting has begun. This year's meeting will be held in New York City, August 1-5, 2009. Tim Louwers, with the assistance of Kenny Reynolds, is serving as 2009 Annual Meeting Coordinator. They are in the process of coordinating the reviews of the submitted manuscripts and panel proposals. They will need to identify discussants for all of these papers as well as moderators for the concurrent sessions. We encourage you to volunteer at the following website: http://aaahq.org/AM2009/sub_volunteer.cfm.
As you register for the AAA Annual Meeting be sure to register for the Auditing Section's luncheon on Monday. This year, Donald Nicolaisen, Former Chief Accountant of the SEC and Co-Chair of the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession, will be the featured speaker. Don has some great insights to share with us regarding the state of the auditing profession and how we might want to consider that in our teaching and research. You will not want to miss it! The Executive Committee has agreed to cap the cost of the Auditing Section luncheon at $50, which is greatly reduced from the amount being charged by the hotel. To allow Section members to attend this luncheon at a more reasonable cost, the Executive Committee has agreed to a one-time subsidy to offset the high costs associated with holding the meeting in NYC. Please plan to join us at the Auditing Section luncheon.
AAA Commons
Julia Higgs has agreed to serve as the Auditing Section’s AAA Commons Editor. Julia will be working with the Executive Committee and Section members to help ensure that the Section uses this new technology in a way that is most beneficial to our members. Thank you Julia for agreeing to take on this very important service role. Click here to sign onto the Commons: https://commons.aaahq.org/signin.
CIIA
Dana Hermanson will be stepping down as co-editor of CIIA effective March 2009 so that he can assume the co-editor role at Accounting Horizons. Thank you Dana for all of your work in getting this new journal off the ground. The articles that have appeared in the first few volumes have highlighted very important topics and are very useful for research and classroom activities.
The Auditing Section is very fortunate that Rich Houston has agreed to become the next co-editor of CIIA. Rich has already started preparing for this role and will work with Scott Showalter, who has agreed to continue as co-editor of CIIA.
Thank You to The KPMG Foundation
In closing, I would like to reiterate my thanks to The KPMG Foundation. The Auditing Section is able to accomplish so much because of The KPMG Foundation's generous, unwavering, and substantial support. This support includes sponsoring two of our marquee events: our Midyear Conference and our Doctoral Consortium. Thank you KPMG Foundation! The Auditing Section truly appreciates your support!
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