Independence
Many attempts to address auditor independence have been made over the
years. In the USA, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act seriously curtailed the provision
of other services to audit clients (following Enron and other scandals).
More recently searching questions have been asked of the role of the big
auditing firms in the banking crisis of 2007–08. Much of that concern
centred on the provision of other services by audit firms to banks which
were audit clients.
It would seem that independence remains a contentious issue long after
the first independence rules and ethical codes were established.
What follows are extracts from the current legislation in the UK, the
Companies Act 2006. Obviously the legislation in your own country may
be different but it is likely to contain similar provisions on most of the
important issues. Nevertheless, whether you are learning about your own
national laws and regulations or reviewing the position in the UK, great
care needs to be taken to ensure that you are not relying on material that
is out of date. Government websites usually allow easy access to the most
relevant legislation and you should always check your sources against
them. Very often major changes in legislation will be flagged up in the
professional press before they become effective, so you should try to keep
up to date by regularly reading the journals of the relevant accountancy
bodies. Although the legislation is of course only relevant in the UK, there
are other countries around the world which often implement similar
legislation.
In the UK, the Companies Act 2006 has made changes to provisions
affecting auditors, but many of the principles from the previous Act remain
(the section numbers in the new Act are of course quite different to those
in the previous legislation).
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