Focus on Engagement Quality: How to Avoid Deficiencies in Peer Reviews (ENQ8)

Overview

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.

Major Topics:

• 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
• Issues related to compilations and reviews
• Issues related to employee benefit plans
• Issues related to Government Auditing Standards/Single Audits
• Best practices in documentation

Learning Objectives:

• Identify key elements of the AICPA’s Enhancing Audit Quality initiative
• 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