New Dawn for Auditing
The ASB takes a look at its future and outlines strategic objectives
The attention services such as consulting and financial planning have received in recent years might have given the false impression that auditing is moribund. This clearly is not the case, as the ASB demonstrated with the issuance of Horizons for the Auditing Standards Board: Strategic Initiatives Toward the Twenty-First Century . The 40-page report provides a “game plan” to meet the auditing community’s needs for the future, according to ASB horizons task force chairman James S. Gerson.
The report identifies several strategic initiatives the ASB will use to help form its agenda:
- Improve the value of the financial statements audit by using technology to provide real-time assurance, by addressing public expectations about assurance and by developing value-added services.
- Broaden the use of attestation standards by making them clearer and more flexible.
- Strengthen the board’s leadership role in international standard setting by working with other bodies.
- Enhance the usefulness of the different types of guidance available to auditors (such as SASs and audit and accounting guides) and make them more accessible.
“Among other issues, we’re concentrating on using attestation standards to do more,” said Gerson. “We want auditors to stretch themselves.”
Horizons for the Auditing Standards Board is available exclusively on AICPA Online at www.aicpa.org/members/div/auditstd/horizon/index.htm.
