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Internal Audit - Science topic

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In their joint fight against tax avoidance and tax evasion international governance developed different tools. One of these tools is the joint audit. The term “joint audit is used to express that two or more countries join together to form a single audit team to examine an issue(s)/transaction(s) of one or more related taxable persons with cross-border business activities.
Taking into account that countries like Australia, the UK, Canada and the US are effectively engaging in joint tax audits, I would like to look into statistical evidence obtained in these countries (e.g. the time length, outcome achieved, resources employed between an internal audit and a joint audit).
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You can find more statistical evidence on joint tax audits by checking out the websites of tax authorities in your country.
You can also check out academic journals and publications on taxation and audit.
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Hi All,
Please share any idea about the possible use case for implementing machine learning in identifying risk identification and fraud detection which may occur at branch level in a bank. Further there is a window dressing concept in banking sector which might be a good kick-off to work on.
If this is the case so please guide me how to create a sample dataset to work on or give me suggestion which ML algorithm is suitable for identifying requirement for Internal Audit.
Many thanks & kind regards,
Dr. Raza.
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Dear professors and researchers, I am looking for a suitable title for my thesis. I searched a lot but couldn't find a new topic. I am researching in the field of internal audit and external audit. Thanks for your cooperation
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To check for a good research topic for your thesis, I suggest you do the following:
1. Choose a number of peer-reviewed research papers related to, say, audit, from Google Scholar or similar websites, not from any other source such as Google, etc.
2. Read these research papers and check for the research gaps from within such research. You may find these gaps under the subtitle, Future Research or similar subtitles.
3. Make sure that such gaps are not covered by recent research. That is, for the gap that you want to cover, read to the last current research in this regard to make sure that no other author(s) already conducted such research.
4. Then, go ahead and start preparing for your research, preferably using the Literature Review Matrix where you put a table showing authors, title, objectives, problem statement, variables, methodologies used, findings, etc. for each research paper selected. By the way, you may want to keep such relevant research papers to use them as references in your research.
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Which is best for fraud control? Internal audit vs External audit, Pre-audit vs Post-audit, Performance audit vs Financial audit?
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Ethics with self regulation!
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Some internal audit reports concluded that, most of the repeated audit findings were due to silly mistakes, careless attitude and incompetencies. Hence, given the guidelines, SOPs and ample training, the repeated mistakes still exist in a firm. Why this situation happens? What are the causes of staff making repeated mistakes in their daily routine job? How to overcome this situation other than proper training, punishment or taking other diciplinary action?
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After being trained (whether in workshops or on-the-spot- training), the employee who makes mistakes should be punished; meanwhile, the employee who is focused and have minimized number of insignificant mistakes should be rewarded. That is, the institution should follow a reward and punishment policy in this regard in order to overcome such a situation.
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Your inputs most appreciated.
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yes
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Dear community,
My master thesis will be related to Blockchain, more specifically to auditing this technology.
I am currently creating an IT audit program for Blockchain. This intends to be a general audit program for this technology, including as many areas as possible in order to have one main document that could be used for different audit purposes  (e.g. auditing ITGC, governance audits, etc).
My initial and main contribution to start this project has been the ISACA audit program (https://www.isaca.org/bookstore/audit-control-and-security-essentials/wapbap). The idea would be to have a "2.0 version", including different tabs for other areas, mapping the processes with COBIT2019, adding a few more columns that could help for the testing process and the final result could be an "upgraded" version of the ISACA Blockchain audit program, ready to be used for auditing Blockchain.
What do you think? Any ideas/suggestions?  Has anyone done something similar? 
Regarding the testing of General IT Controls for Blockchain (p.e. a tool with this technology), anyone with expertise on this? I have read a very interesting article about this topic:
Sheldon, Mark. (2019). A Primer for Information Technology General Control Considerations on a Private and Permissioned Blockchain Audit. Current Issues in Auditing. 13. 10.2308/ciia-52356. Available at https://aaapubs.org/doi/pdf/10.2308/ciia-52356
Thank you in advance.
Best regards,
Carlos
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Blockchain is One of the most promising technology.
check topic security of smart contract by blockchain and
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I want to learn more about the role of Internal Audit during the value creation processes such as strategic thinking or formation and implementation
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Internal Audit is more focused on controls assurance and the detection of error and fraud. The kinds of people who choose a career in internal audit are typically not strategic thinkers in the context of business strategy. What may be more relevant to the development of business strategy is risk management.
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I want to research the impact of internal audit function on the work of external auditor, I will extend the research by showing the extent of the impact of internal auditors relating to some factors such as independence, integrity, and transparency on external auditors work.
I will collect the data by using survey and the sample from external auditor firms.
I am new at this, so I am trying to figure out which test I need to use to analyze my data and the reason behind choosing that test, also did am I correct in choosing only external auditors as sample?
thanks in advance
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فرضيات البحث هي التي تتحكم في ذلك
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For example, the summary of research as below:-
1) Title: Factors of Internal Audit Effectiveness
2) DV: Internal Audit Effectiveness
3) IV: i) Risk management, ii) Effective internal control system, iii) Audit experience, iv) Cooperation between internal and external auditor, v) Performance measurement
I manage to state one Research Question and few Objectives (main and sub) as below:
Research Question: What are the factors of internal audit effectiveness?
Objectives:
Main objective
· To identify the factors of internal audit effectiveness
The sub-objectives
i) To ascertain the relationship between risk management and internal audit effectiveness.
ii) To examine the relationship between effective internal control system and internal audit effectiveness.
iii) To identify the relationship between audit experience and internal audit effectiveness.
iv) To identify the relationship between cooperation between internal and external auditor and internal audit effectiveness.
v) To investigate the relationship between performance measurement and internal audit effectiveness.
Is it the correct / appropriate way to state the Research Question and Objectives as above? Or should I state Sub-questions according to the sub-objectives as well?
Please comment. Thanks.
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Interesting question and I follow the answers.
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Hello!I am trying to measure the performance of Internal Audit in both private and public sector.
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I am looking for new trends i.e. Agile auditing. Further, new methodology to analyze the competency level of an auditor along with methodologies to assess the audit risk.
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I've got a keen interest in auditing from a manufacturing perspective. I am also an internal auditor.
If you like to discuss in detail please PM me.
My insight in to internal audit strategy - From an internal auditing perspective, a lot of auditors give the area notice of the audit. The reason for this from an internal auditors point of view is so that the auditor can understand what he needs to audit and plan for it. However, this also give the auditee's a chance to prepare for the audit. This in a way, is not a true depiction of the area being audited.
However, giving them a chance to prepare at least makes them evaluate themselves and look to become compliant. Its an interesting thing to consider. Do you turn up unannounced and audit them, or do you inform them of the audit, giving them a chance to prepare and what benefit does this provide in the long term, or is it just a short term fix.
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Recently, many of capital market authorities (e.g. New York Stock Exchange; Malaysian Securities Commission) require listed companies to establish internal audit function, as result of preceding corporate fraud (e.g. Enron). In practices, this function is performed either by company's employees or by external provider (other than the company's external auditor). Therefore, I will be grateful if you can state whether listed companies in your country (or other countries based in your knowledge) are required to have entirely in-house IAF or optional (entirely in-house, entirely out-sourced or co-sourced). Thank you.
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Thank you dear Peter for sharing your country practice.
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Hi,
I Analyse the intercation between Audit committee, intarnal Audit and statutory Auditor in Audit process. Internal Audit is a function subordinated to the Management. Otherwise Audit committee and statutory Auditor doesn't have a direct acces to the work of the internal Audit.
Please could you tell me, how to improve the effectiveness of internal audit in the audit process for a better Corporate governance in Two-Tier and One-Tier Systeme?
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It isan independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organization's operations. It helps an organization accomplish its objectives by bringing a systematic, disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control, and governance processes.
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The role of internal and external audit to prevent and detect financial statement fraud.
How can external and internal audit prevent and detect fraud in financial statement.
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Hi! I want to analyse the interractions between audit committee, internal audit and external audit in the limited companies. The board of directors and the supervisory board  are the internal Organs while the external Auditor is an external organ of limited companies. Please could you tell me if it is possible to consider also the internal audit as an internal organ?
Thanks!
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Thank you all! :)
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Increasingly, higher percentages of employees are willing to share sensitive, confidential or regulated information
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Welcome, Sir? The disgruntled insiders are likely to cash on confidential information to sell to competitors. Therefore access management, strong passwords, continuous monitoring, centralised login, vulnerability management, risk management, could be the way forward in near-time 
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The question is related to determinants of internal audit function effectiveness in Tanzania
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Yes of course!
In this direction, you can see my article -
Research on control function under the influence and impact of financial control activities of the Agency for State Financial Inspection /Изследване на контролната функция, под влиянието и въздействието на финансово-контролната дейност на Агенцията за държавна финансова инспекция/
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Balanced Scorecard on example of Tesla Motors is a subject for my Final paper.
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You might be interested in these papers on the Balanced Scorecard indicators and stakeholder maps.
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Could anyone recommend a database where I can find a proper archival data about Internal Audit Functions in Australian listed companies?
Hello everyone,
I am considering a potential research project based on an archival data about Internal Audit Functions (IAF), Audit Committees (AC) and other corporate governance functions in Australian companies. I want to know the number of the defined population to decide the feasibility of regression analysis. Thus, I need some key statistics such as the number of listed companies that have an IAF and AC, their structures, and reporting mechanisms of IAF.
Is there a database or a particular way of collecting such information or the full data (other than a survey)?
I sincerely appreciate your help,
Hamed
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Hamed, you can try OSIRIS database which provides Information on listed companies - globally. Maybe you can also try ORIANA which provides company information specific Asia-Pacific region. All the best! 
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The theory should be relevant to less developed countries in Africa especially in Tanzania environment where market forces are not much advanced and corporate governance is at infancy stage.
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Thanking you so much for your valuable contributions.Because i am doing a  PhD research, we agreed with my supervisors to use three theories in combination.The theories are Agency theory to show how effective internal audit function aid in reducing monitoring costs,Institutional theory to show how internal audit contribute to organizational behaviour change to positive side to conform to society requirements and other stakeholders requirements and lastly,Communication theory to show how internal audit function help organization in disclosure of pertinent information in financial statements to meet varied stakeholders needs. I appreciate for your valuable time you use to make the contributions  to me.
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In our 2015 paper (Lenz & Hahn, http://www.emeraldinsight.com/toc/maj/30/1) about the empirical Internal Audit (IA) effectiveness literature we acknowledge the still fuzzy understanding of the determinants of IA effectiveness.
In that paper we suggest exploring – among other things:
  1. Are there reliable hard measures of IA effectiveness or is IA effectiveness ultimately all about soft factors?
  2. Can we find cases of IA effectiveness based on validated secondary indicators like fraud or financial performance? If so, are there recent cases providing evidence that more effective IA leads to less fraud and better financial performance?
If you’d be contacted by a PhD student who wants to build on prior research, and who is interested in examining / modelling the determinants / factors of IA effectiveness, what would you suggest the student to consider?Interested in your perspectives.
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I think internal audit is inherent with a very complex issues that only can be explored and explained by using qualitative approach such as a case studies or a good number of individuals interviewers with internal auditors. in addition, studying internal audit function need to explore factors and other parties that can influence on their responsibilities such as audit committee, CFO, CEO, and external auditor.  Thanks for raising such question 
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Dear all,
An increasing number of listed firms are using XBRL in the reporting process.Would this complicate the audit approaches and audit implications?
Also, in the auditees' perspectives, what is the costs-benefits of using XBRL? Please share your views, experiences and thoughts, thanks
Background:
Since 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) expects firms to use eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) to file their reports. This helps tag a firm’s financial information using a computer readable and searchable engine. Investors are demanding assurance on the tagging process but the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has yet to issue a guidance on attesting the engagements regarding XBRL financial information furnished under the SEC’s current voluntary filer program, which relies on the auditor agreeing a paper version of the XBRL-related documents to the information in the official EDGAR filing. This approach is deemed adequate for the current paper-oriented reporting paradigm but once the filing in XBRL becomes mandatory, this will affect the way financial and non-financial data are reported, used and attested. The current audit focus on reconciling only the XBRL output with the paper submissions may not completely address this paradigm shift and may add costs to the rising audit costs and delays of issuing audit opinions.
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Dear all,
If you or your professional contacts are using XBRL for audit/assurance purposes, please share the cost-benefits, thanks
Gin
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I want to assess effectiveness of internal audit function effectiveness in developing countries.
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I will use role theory,relational coordination theory and Institutional theory in my research  as I think they are more relevant. than agency theory.
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I am interested study on factors that contribute to failure of the HR internal audit policies to curb ghost workers in public sector organizations in developing countries.
Can any one please,  link me with sources or research articles related to  HR ( Human Resource ) internal Audit Control in curbing Payroll fraud in Public Sector.
Thank you
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Coincidentally I just published a paper on this very topic.  Attached.  It is not just developing countries who suffer this problem but developed countries too.  As to why there is a prevalence of labour fraud particularly in public sector, it seems to me there is often an unhealthy relationship between governments and labour unions resulting in distortions that involve turning a blind eye to benefits paid to public sector workers that their private sector counterparts can only dream of. 
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I am preparing my thesis on internal audit in Health Units of the Public Sector in Greece for my Master's Degree .Thanks in advance.
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This may help in your search
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I am researching challenges with internal audits in context of agile software development within an ISO 9001:2008 TickIT certified organisation. I am interested in studies covering alternative non-intimating approaches or means to avoiding the philosophical conflict between a hierarchical approach (ISO 9000 auditing) and a collaborative methodology (Agile development)
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I am familiar with the TickIT, its earlier version, and auditing process. When an external auditor is conducting a compliance audit to verify compliance to the standard's requirements, that is a standard audit.
When an internal audit conducted by one or more trained internal quality auditors, they collaborate with the auditee(s) to review the process, corresponding documentation, and records to identify opportunities for improvement. So, collaborative internal audits are or can be conducted when performing internal audits to improve processes.
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Please can you share some research paper about  the relation between tax audit and internal control in the firm 
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In developed countries, large corporations are subject to frequent scrutiny by tax authorities. "Tax" includes not just income taxes but also value-added taxes, commodity taxes, royalty payments and other government levies. All of these categories are subject to tax audits. 
Because their transactions are so numerous and complicated, both the companies and the tax auditors must rely on strong internal controls to ensure that information is classified and recorded properly for tax purposes. When internal control is strong, tax audits can be done efficiently, without undue disruption to the companies' operations. When internal control is weak, the auditors must seek additional information. The companies bear the costs of producing this information in a credible format. Such costs can be huge if the internal control system is in disarray; indeed, a tax audit may be so invasive as to threaten a company's continuing existence. 
So investing in strong internal control is efficient for both operational purposes and for tax reporting purposes. For operational purposes, strong internal control ensures that resources are obtained and used efficiently and effectively in accomplishing organizational objectives. For tax purposes, strong internal control ensures that information is classified and recorded properly in fulfilling the organization's obligation to government bodies. 
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Short cases for training people in the field of Internal Auditing
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Dear José-Luis Fernández-Fernández
Greetings,
Please find the  attached file , may be interesting for you and related  for ethical dimension of internal auditing,
Best Regards, 
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I am going to study the effect of the auditors industry specialization on audit risk.
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Go through the attached files herewith
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i am asking for standards that apply in charities for internal auditing since they are not as corporations.
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All charitable entities have operation function in whatever form or name it is called. Internal audit function is handy to provide independent and objective assurance and sometime consulting services on whether the said operation function is achieving its objectives. This could be outsourced as observed by Lynn.
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I will appreciate articles that relates contingency theory to the effectiveness of internal auditing especially in the banking industry.
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It is difficult to establish such a relationship. Perhaps contingency theory is useful for operational audit. In financial audit would be most appropriate to use agency theory and the new institutionalism.
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I wanna know if the continuous learning influence the internal audit effectiveness
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I can potentially offer you a case study.  There are a number of articles from internal audit practitioner journals evidencing continuous learning with resulting benefits to internal audit effectiveness measured in dollar terms, typically millions of dollars saved.  Examples attached. 
The continuous learning methodologies used are Action Learning (Reg Revans) and Action Research (Kurt Lewin), which are more qualitative, consultative and less mechanistic than, say, Six Sigma. 
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Some important structural pillars of corporate governance are the board of directors, executive management, internal audit, external audit and the risk management functions.
Trust is a foundation of all human relationships. The need to focus actions and behaviours on embedding and sustaining trust is at the heart of organisational culture. Good governance will depend to some degree on the level of trust existing between the people in such structural functions. An objective of assurance functions like internal audit and risk management should be to enhance the trust within governance relationships.
What role / value does assurance play in maintaining and increasing such trust?
I am looking for initial pointers to research that has been undertaken on this topic.
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Dear Leslie
May be that you were interested in this book: VIRTUE BASED MANAGEMENT from the St. Antoninus Institute.
This may be your initial pointer.
                      Guillermo
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Some studies provide evidence that the provision of non-audit services may harm the external auditors’ independence, consequently, SOX regulation in the U.S. limited the scope of such services.
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I think that there are quite a few differences between the nature of assurance provided by internal and external auditors. The actual auditing techniques (particularly when it comes to control tests) are going to be very similar, but the aim of the internal audit is to provide assurance about the sound functioning of the internal controls (whether financial or non-financial) for internal management purposes. When it comes to external audit, the aim to express an opinion on the financial statements. As a result, the scope of the external audit engagement will be quite different. The external auditor may be interested in some of the processes, systems and controls that have been tested by internal auditors and may even place reliance on some of their work. Nevertheless, there will be certain procedures performed by and focus areas for the external auditor that do not feature in a traditional internal audit plan.
As for the issue of auditor independence, there are indeed a number of papers that point to a relationship between rendering non-audit services and impaired independence of external auditors. That said, there are some papers that argue that this relationship is not statistically significant. As a result, I don’t think that the debate on the rendering of non-audit services has been completely resolved. Related to this, almost all of these papers are empirical in nature. I am not totally convinced that they prove that non-audit services can threaten auditor independence. For example, an auditor with a high level of moral cognition may be able to render non-audit services and still provide a high quality audit engagement characterized by high levels of professionalism , integrity and objectivity. On the other hand, an auditor at a pre-conventional level (or one who is implicitly unethical) may lack independence and fail to carry out the engagement with integrity and objectivity even though he has rendered only audit services. AS a result I don’t think that simply introducing additional restrictions in SOX (or any other legislation) is going to make a material difference to auditor independence.