Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
The driving force behind this project was the perceived problems of the company audit following the collapse of Enron and WorldCom, together with their auditors, Arthur Andersen. The problems with the audit include the so called ‘expectations gap’ between what the public believe the audit is for – mainly to uncover fraud - and what the accountants claim to deliver, together with the commercial pressures on the independence of auditors. The project set out to generate data via questionnaires and interviews with American accountants which would throw light on these issues. The results identify and quantify changes in for example: the social and educational background and training of American CPAs; their audit techniques; their opinions as to the purpose of the audit; their relationships with their clients; their attitudes to and explanations for the recent scandals, and to the regulatory regime in the US. The data will also allow comparisons with British accountants based on similar previous research.
Main Topics:
The questionnaire programme used the commercial internet survey – Zoomerang. 14,000 AICPA members selected at random were e-mailed, 805 responses to the 87 questions were received (including from accountants born pre-first world war) and entered on a spreadsheet. The 29 interviews conducted include both the leaders and the rank and file of the American profession past and present: those who worked in practice and those in industry; also the current and all previous chairmen of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and some leading lights on the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and the International Accounting Standards Board; the present chairman of the AICPA, and the CEOs of the Big 4 accounting firms. The data collected by the project, is both statistical (based on box ticking in the questionnaire) and qualitative (based on written replies to the questionnaire and the transcribed interviews) in nature, and represents a rich primary source which throws light historically and at the present time on a profession which continues in the public spotlight.
No sampling (total universe)
Face-to-face interview
Telephone interview
