（2004）Discussion of restoring auditor credibility.pdfVIP

International Journal of Accounting Information Systems 5 (2004) 207– 209 Discussion Discussion of restoring auditor credibility: tertiary monitoring and logging of continuous auditing systems Eckhardt Kriel * Ernst and Young LLP, Canada Received 1 January 2004; accepted 1 January 2004 This is a very interesting paper and is sure to generate a lot of comment and debate. There is no doubt that the accounting profession is suffering from a lack of credibility at this time. The paper is accordingly topical and relevant, if not a little provocative. In my comments that follow, I have deliberately kept the focus at a high level rather than delving into the details of whether, for example, one database technology is better than another or whether one encryption technique is better than another. I am also commenting from the point of view of a Canadian practitioner. When I read the paper I was struck by the presumed implication that, in the business failures we have seen to date, the auditors colluded with management in an attempt to intentionally defraud the investors. This presumption is then used in the rest of the paper to build the case for the auditors themselves to be monitored. Certainly, in a limited number of instances, this may have been the case, but our research into significant corporate failures over the last 10 years highlights the fact that the auditors themselves were often the victims of collusive management fraud. The version of the paper that I reviewed does not take into account the recent measures put in place by the regulators through the U.S. ‘‘Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Prot