Avoiding Deficiencies in Peer Reviews: Focus on Engagement Quality

Description

With the AICPA's heightened focus on enhancing audit quality, increased oversight of the peer review process and the auditor's overall responsibility to provide high quality services, the focus on compliance with professional standards has never been greater. Add to that the requirement to implement the revised risk assessment standards (SAS 145) and it's easy to see why it's more important than ever to ensure that auditors have a good understanding of the requirements and comply with documentation standards. Recent peer reviews have indicated that auditors are often failing to perform and/or document certain critical components of an audit such as the auditor's assessment of risk and linking the results of the assessment to substantive procedures performed. In addition, auditors are not adequately documenting their consideration of fraud, expectations in analytical procedures and the appropriate level of work needed to understand an entity's internal control. The AICPA issued its Quality Management Standards in 2022. Firms are required to implement the standards by December 15, 2025. And the firm's evaluation of the System of Quality Management is required within one year after that. This is not just a matter of tweaking the firm's existing QM document, the standard requires a risk assessment process to identify risk. The objective of the course is to provide the insights necessary to help auditors and accountants improve not just the quality of their work but also the perception of the accounting profession as a whole. We will focus on the most significant items resulting in deficiencies identified in the peer review process. We will also discuss the applicable audit standards, documentation requirements, and best practices. We will address the new QM standards.

Highlights

  • AICPA's Enhancing Audit Quality initiative
  • Recent revisions to Quality Management standards
  • Feedback from peer reviews, including areas driving deficiencies in audit
  • Elements of an effective risk assessment and how to link to audit procedures performed
  • Understanding internal controls and making the decision whether or not to test them
  • Best practices in documentation

Objectives

  • Identify key elements of the AICPA's Enhancing Audit Quality initiative
  • Recognize changes in Quality Management standards
  • Recognize key trends in recent peer review deficiencies noted
  • Identify professional standards related to performing a risk assessment, understanding and testing internal controls, and linking these procedures to further audit consideration
  • Implement best practices to help ensure overall engagement quality

Designed For

Accounting and auditing practitioners at all levels desiring to improve engagement quality

Leaders

Renee Rampulla

Renee Rampulla, CPA, CGMA, has over twenty years of professional experience. She consults, writes, and lectures on technical accounting and auditing issues. Rampulla has extensive experience in the auditing of public and privately held entities ranging from the manufacturing and service sectors, to financial services. Previously she was a partner in a regional accounting firm in the northeast in charge of the firm's accounting and auditing practice and their quality control group.

Rampulla is the founder of Rampulla Advisory Services, LLC. Her clients include nationally recognized professional organizations, accounting firms, companies, publishers and others. By devoting several years of her career at both regional and Big Four accounting firms Rampulla accumulated a wealth of technical and practical knowledge. In addition, while working for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), she performed professional ethics investigations; worked closely with senior technical committees; presented technical guidance before standard setters; and authored and updated several AICPA publications.

For several years Rampulla has been an adjunct lecturer at a university in New York City. She has taught numerous undergraduate accounting and auditing courses. Rampulla holds a BBA in Public Accounting from Bernard M. Baruch College. She is a member of the AICPA, the NYSSCPA, the New Jersey State Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJSCPA), the Institute of Management Accountants, the American Woman's Society of Certified Public Accountants, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, and the National Conference of Certified Public Accountants Practitioners.

Rampulla serves as a committee member of the NYSSCPA's Professional Ethics Committee and the Financial Accounting Standards Committee. She is the 2012 -- 2014 Leader of the NJSCPA's Accounting and Auditing Standards Interest Group and previously served as the 2011-2012 Vice-Leader. She has also served as co-chair of the NJSCPA Accounting Standards.