Either every company that has an auditor that also provides consulting services for them has cooked books, or every company that has an exemption from the SEC that enables them to hide partnerships from the auditors has cooked books. I think the latter is more probable.
On auditing and consulting, I do not think that compromises independence of the auditor, however, I think that the appearance of independence has forever been tainted. All of the big 5 are now getting out of consulting.
This is good, because IMO, as consultants, they have done more harm than all the corruption in the Clinton admin could possibly do to our economy. Instead of reengineering companies around their strengths, they attempted to reengineer them around shrienk wrapped software packages. And a lot of times, they failed. When all of the healthcare providers were struggling a few years ago, it was because these big 5 consultants just walked out on them, after billing them millions of dollars, and leaving them without an information system at all. |
