Audit Client Considerations
LannyBeaudean joined the CPA firm of Cardinal & Coyote LLP in 2008 after working for two years for the IRS in Phoenix, Arizona. The firm is a second-tier CPA firm just below the Big Four in size. Beaudean had passed all four parts of the CPA Exam in Arizona and decided to work for a locally based CPA firm with international clients to gain a broad base of experience that might help him become a CFO at a public company in the future. Beaudean has been advancing rapidly and just became a senior at Cardinal & Coyote.
Yancy Corliss is a new audit partner at Cardinal & Coyote. One day Corliss was summoned to the office of Sharon Rules, the managing partner of the firm. Rules told Corliss that she had been approached by a new client, Jost Furniture International. Jost is a large southwestern chain of home furniture rental catering to young upscale individuals who might live in a city for two years or so and then move on. It recently opened an office in Canada and plans to expand to Europe in the not-too-distant future. Top management at Jost seemed to imply that the firm would get the audit as long as it submitted a reasonable bid.
Rules asked Corliss to do background checks on Jost and make whatever inquiries were necessary to assess the potential business risk of Jost as a future client. Corliss was given three days to do the work and report back to Rules with a recommendation. If the decision is to go ahead, then Cardinal & Coyote would submit a bid and compete with one other CPA firm for the account. The firm believes it will be a lucrative account, especially since the company has been in an expansion mode and will require advice on acquisitions and other advisory services in the future.
Corliss assembled his team to review the background and other information about Jost Furniture. Corliss asked Beaudean to head up the assessment and report back to Corliss in two days. During that time, Beaudean would have two other staff members to help with the assignment. Beaudean was excited about his first opportunity to work on new client assessment.
Beaudean met with Vinnie Gabelli, a transplanted Brooklyn native who had graduated from Arizona State University (ASU) at Phoenix. Gabelli was like a fish out of water in Arizona even though he had spent 16 months in the master's of accounting program at ASU. Gabelli thought a prickly pear was someone who could not make it in Staten Island and moved to Brooklyn for a better life.
Gabelli told Beaudean that he welcomed the opportunity to work with a native of Phoenix and learn about its colorful history. Beaudean also asked Jackie Oloff, a native of Minneapolis, to join the team. Jackie had moved to Phoenix two years ago with her husband, who is a professor of accounting at ASU. The team discussed mutual responsibilities, data sources for the information, key areas of risk, and then they broke up to start their work. At the end of the day, the team reassembled to share information.
Read the above case. Choose one of the individuals in the case and identify their actions and viewpoints. Write up an executive summary on the case, including answers to the following questions.
1. Brief review of the case from your auditor's point of view (one paragraph)
2. Identification of the key behaviors, attitudes, and ethical dilemmas faced by or caused by the auditor
3. Assessment of the philosophical and practical approaches to ethical decision-making that could have avoided the problems in the case
4. Evaluation of alternatives to solve the situation in the case
5. Summary of actions that you might have taken yourself if you had been in this situation in real life