Auditor

"Clearly the attitude of disrespect that many executives have today for accurate reporting is a business disgrace. And auditors, as we have already suggested, have done little on the positive side. Though auditors should regard the investing public as their client, they tend to kowtow instead to the managers who choose them and dole out their pay. (“Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.”)"

"One of the biggest problems facing regulatory compliance is individuals running testing applications without understanding all the other simultaneous objectives still required. Running software will never make a person a competent auditor."

"It is the duty of the auditor to see that the authority to charge is not made a pretext for extravagance or favouritism."

"There is nothing more sacred in the auditor-client literature than the notion of auditor independence, dating from the emergence of a professionalized service in the 19th century. According to the self-congratulatory atmosphere among the regulators of the world's securities markets, the problem of dubious accounting would be fully solved by strictly limiting the kinds of services that auditors can provide to clients. Yet with each of the surviving Big Four burdened by the weight of a litigation list of cases large enough to be fatal, this unexamined burden has become yet another millstone. To be both blunt and unconventional — it is time to stop making nice, and to discard this 165-year-old piece of conventional wisdom. The concept of auditor independence does not serve the interests of investors."