Summary of 2009 Auditing Midyear Conference
St. Petersburg, Florida
By Brian Ballou (Miami University) and
Chris Hogan (Michigan State University)
The 2009 Auditing Midyear Conference was held in St. Petersburg, Florida, January 15-17, 2009, at the Bayfront Hilton Hotel. The meeting was preceded by the 10th annual Auditing Section Doctoral Consortium and the Audit Education Workshop.
The meeting included two plenary sessions on Friday. The morning's plenary speech by Charles Holm, Chief Accountant of The Federal Reserve Board, Division of Banking Supervision and Regulation in Washington D.C. provided a summary of current banking supervision and regulation processes and a discussion of the credit crisis in the U.S. He discussed several potential developments in banking and bank regulation as a result of U.S. government actions and international initiatives such as the Financial Stability Forum and Basel II. Friday afternoon's plenary session by Oliver Halle, Diann Cattani and Josh Kenyon titled “Taking the Harder Right” (see their website at www.CorporateScaredStraight.com) provided an insider’s view of fraud and it’s devastating effects. As Oliver says about Diann and Josh in his book, “they opened their hearts and bared their souls in sharing the experiences that devastated their lives...in the hope that others will learn from them.”
From left: Brian Ballou (Conference Co-organizer) and Charles Holm (Plenary Speaker, Chief Accountant of The Federal Reserve Board, Division of Banking Supervision and Regulation).
The meeting also included four outstanding panel sessions. The Education Committee sponsored a session on “International Standards on Auditing: Preparing the Future Members of the Profession” with participants from academics, practice and the PCAOB. The Auditing Standards Committee sponsored a panel titled “International Convergence and Clarity Research Opportunities” with members of the IAASB, the PCAOB, practice and academia represented on the panel. Cynthia Fornelli from the Center for Audit Quality moderated a panel with prominent partners from Big 4 audit firms on the role of the Center for Audit Quality, audit issues related to fair value accounting and the current market crisis, potential regulatory responses from the credit crisis and Madoff fraud, and implications for the profession from a movement to accounting and auditing convergence. The Research Committee coordinated a panel on “Current Research Opportunities in Auditing” with panel participants discussing research opportunities related to COSO Monitoring Guidance and ERM, judgment and decision-making, fair value auditing, and fraudulent financial reporting. All four panels were well attended and generated extensive discussion of current issues in the profession and academe.
Forty-eight papers were presented in the concurrent sessions, including three teaching cases. Another 32 papers were presented at the Research Roundtable session on Saturday morning. Total meeting attendance was 306. The Doctoral Consortium had 51 students participating, and the Audit Education Workshop had 75 participants.
The conference program and copies of many of the papers featured at the meeting are still available at: http://aaahq.org/meetings/2009AUD_program.htm.
We are very grateful to the many people who helped make this conference successful. First, we thank the KPMG Foundation and Bernie Milano for their faithful sponsorship and support of the conference. Second, we thank Auditing Section President Audrey Gramling, the 2009 Program Committee Vice Chairs Jennifer Joe and Susan Shu, and the Doctoral Consortium Chair, Mark Zimbelman. Third, we thank our friends at the AAA, including Kathy Casper, Debbie Gardner, Sonja Langley, Arlene Oliver, Dee Strahan, and Peggy Turczyn. Finally, we thank all of the authors, reviewers, discussants, moderators, and panelists who helped make the program possible.
From left, Chris Hogan (Conference Co-organizer) presents the award for best paper by a Ph.D student to Jaime Schmidt.
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