The Auditing Standards Board’s priorities for 2026 and beyond

Sponsored by TaxBandits

Halie Creps, CPA, chair of the AICPA Auditing Standards Board, joined the JofA podcast to  discuss the ASB’s refreshed 2026–2030 strategic plan and its focus on responsiveness, collaboration, and technology.

She also explained why taking part in AICPA committees and boards is important to her and mentioned the link that members can visit to explore volunteer opportunities.

Creps highlighted current projects, including proposed updates to attestation standards, sustainability assurance, confirmations, and fraud. She also explained how practitioner feedback and international standard‑setting influence the board’s work.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• Why Creps said that serving on the Auditing Standards Board helps make her a better auditor.
• A mention of the numerous types of volunteer opportunities for members.
• How the ASB’s 2026–2030 strategic plan reflects stakeholder feedback.
• What proposed changes to attestation standards could mean for practitioners.
• How sustainability assurance fits into the ASB’s broader standards framework.
• The status of and comment deadlines for exposure drafts on confirmations and fraud.
• How technology and global collaboration are shaping future audit standards.

Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:

— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Neil Amato at Neil.Amato@aicpa-cima.com.

Transcript

Neil Amato: Halie Creps is chair of the AICPA Auditing Standards Board. She’s also a KPMG partner, and she’s our guest on the Journal of Accountancy podcast. I’m Neil Amato with the JofA, and you’ll hear our conversation right after this sponsor message.

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Amato: As I said, Halie Creps is our guest. One bit of trivia we discovered recently. We didn’t know it at the time, but we both lived in the same North Carolina city for a bit way back in the 1990s. Halie, welcome to the Journal of Accountancy podcast. Thanks for being on.

Halie Creps: Thanks for having me, and it is a small world, isn’t it?

Amato: Exactly. I want to ask you first, I said you’re the chair of the Auditing Standards Board, or the ASB. Before becoming chair, were you a member of the board, and also how long is your term?

Creps: I was a member of the board. I was on the board for three years before taking on this role, and I also chaired the Attestation Task Force for the ASB during that time. Three years in that role, and then I am just finishing up my first year as the chair, and it generally is for three consecutive one-year periods, usually from May to May each year.

Amato: That’s great. Thank you for that timeline. You mentioned the word attestation. I have a feeling it’s going to come up again in this conversation. But first, I’ll ask you this. Why is volunteering on boards for the AICPA important to you?

Creps: I think there’s a couple of reasons. First is really giving back to the profession. I’ve spent my entire career in public accounting, and it’s really great to be able to volunteer in a way that helps provide practitioners with the standards and guidance and everything they need to really do their jobs and perform quality services. We’re establishing the building blocks to establishing trust in the profession, and I get to be a part of that. I think that’s really rewarding.

Another reason I really benefit from this role is getting to experience everything that goes into an audit or an attest standard, and it really gives me a much better understanding of the why behind the words. I get to be involved in all these deliberations and really that makes me a better auditor on the back end because I really understand the standards.

Then I think the last reason I’ll mention is getting to be involved with such a vast organization. I don’t think I fully appreciated until I took on this role really how big the AICPA is as an organization and the ASB is just one part of that. It really allows me to interact with a lot of people outside of the audit space that have similar objectives and priorities, and there’s a lot of overlap there. It’s been really great being able to add my perspective to that mix.

I guess I’ll just give a plug that if anyone listening has any interest in volunteering with any of the many boards or executive committees or task forces or working groups that the AICPA has, there is a page on the AICPA-CIMA website that has lots of information on various opportunities, so put that out there.

Amato: Great. Since you mentioned it, we will be sure to include a link to that in the show notes for this episode. Another thing we will be linking to is the ASB’s strategic plan for 2026-2030. That’s now out, and while it is consistent with the plan from the previous time period, it has had a refresh on several topics. What are some of those?

Creps: We last updated our strategic plan, I think back maybe around 2020, so that was for the 2021-2025 period. It seemed like a refresh was in order to set us up for the next five years. As part of that, we sought public comments on the plan and on our priorities to really help us make sure that our objectives, planned actions, priorities, all of that stuff, aligned with the public interest and what our stakeholders really expect from us or want from us. We took that feedback that we had received and then also got input from the rest of the board and made some tweaks, but nothing drastic, I would say.

Some of those key updates that we did make include adding a key to our success specifically related to obtaining feedback from relevant stakeholders. That’s just such an important part of the due process that we go through. We wanted to make sure that was clearly articulated. We also expanded on the opportunities and challenges associated with technology, given how dynamic that space is and acknowledging that it’s going to continue to evolve.

We acknowledged a specific challenge around the current regulatory environment because it really is creating a lot of uncertainty and unpredictability. Then, we increased our focus on collaboration with other standard-setters and organizations both within the AICPA — I mentioned it was this vast organization —certain other committees are really critical to us to liaise with and collaborate with, such as PEEC, which is the Professional Ethics Executive Committee. Then also globally, such as with the International Audit and Assurance Standards Board, the IAASB, and then other jurisdictional standard-setters. We think that collaboration and knowing what they’re doing and trying to align as much as possible with what is going on in the global environment, I think, is important.

Then we also highlighted the need to be responsive quickly to the changing needs and environments, which may mean accelerating the development of standards or may mean that the right answer isn’t necessarily changing the standards, but putting out some other guidance or materials to help practitioners. Our strategic plan is really a guiding document to help us be more effective, responsive, and focused as a standard-setting body.

Amato: That’s a really good summary. You’ve hit on a lot of topics and definitely, I think the word responsive is one theme that can be drawn from it. What are some of the key initiatives that the ASB has been working on just in the first few months of this year?

Creps: We’ve been pretty busy. The board’s met a couple of times already this year, and I think there’s probably three main topics that we’ve been focusing on. The first is the attestation standards. I know we’ve mentioned that earlier, and the IAASB, our international colleagues, had published a new standard on assurance engagements over sustainability information.

Sustainability is a word that comes up as a subject matter in a lot of different contexts. We’ve been going through a process of analyzing the changes that they made with that new standard to see if, where, and how they should be incorporated into the AICPA attestation standards. While the IAASB focused solely on sustainability, the ASB looked a little more holistically at our existing standards and is proposing changes to the baseline standards that apply to attestation engagements regardless of the subject matter.

Then also creating a section specific to sustainability matters. But I think sustainability, it was the topic of the day for a couple of years now, but we have seen how quickly that can change and that there are often new subject matters that become the focus or the areas where stakeholders want assurance. You think about digital assets or AI. Those are some of the common things that we hear. What we don’t see changing is the increase in demand for assurance over new and emerging subject matters, whether that’s driven by regulation or public interest. But we wanted to make sure that the attestation standards really provide the appropriate framework for practitioners, regardless of the subject matter that they’re assuring.

We spent quite a while liberating those standards and really that culminated in the issuance of an exposure draft back at the end of February, and that had the changes to the baseline standards as well as a new sustainability section for examinations and reviews. Then we also, a couple of weeks later, issued another exposure draft that’s very highly correlated, and it included conforming amendments to other sections in the attestation standards that were driven by the changes we were proposing to the baseline standards. Comments on both of those are welcomed by the end of June, I think is when the comment period closes.

The next topic that we’ve really focused on is confirmations, and this is a good example of a topic where we’re looking at it because probably a bit outdated, given technology and other advances in practice over the past decade or so. It was last changed significantly back in the early 2010s, I think, and didn’t really contemplate some newer concepts such as the ways we use intermediaries in the process of obtaining confirmations or the ability to directly access information from an external source. We issued an exposure draft on that last year and have been redeliberating the changes based on the feedback that we got through that process, and we are planning to vote on a final standard for that at our May meeting.

Then the last topic that we’ve spent some time on recently is fraud, always a hot topic for auditors and how we deal with fraud in the audits. This was also driven by changes that the IAASB made to their international equivalent. We followed along with what they were doing and then decided what to incorporate into the U.S. AICPA fraud standard. We also had an exposure draft on that one last year and just started going through the comments that we received at our last meeting, so we’ll continue through that process. But those are really the couple of things we’ve focused on more recently.

Amato: That’s great. You did mention some of those exposure drafts put out both last year and also earlier this year. We will link to our Journal of Accountancy coverage of those with the documents and noting those comment deadlines that are coming up, so good reminders. You mentioned the May meeting. At this recording, late April, wat are some of the other discussion areas for that meeting in mid-May?

Creps: Our May meeting it’s actually always one of my favorite ASB meetings, and that’s because it’s an in-person meeting and many of our meetings are virtual these days. Get to see everybody in-person. It’s also the last meeting for outgoing board members, and so it’s really great to be able to wish them well in person. It is a good meeting.

But on our agenda, as I mentioned, we’ll be going through the confirmation standard with the intention of holding a final vote on those changes. We will continue to discuss fraud and going through more of the feedback received from the comment letters there and how the task force is proposing to address that feedback.

Then we are planning to kick off a new project on the topic of going concern. This is another one where the IAASB has made some changes. We want to look at those changes, as well as whether any other changes to our standard on auditing going concern are needed.

Amato: A lot going on clearly, both here, internationally. What other core initiatives of the ASB would you like to mention?

Creps: I don’t think you can talk about auditing and not mention technology these days.

Amato: True.

Creps: One other thing I am really excited for actually at our May meeting is hearing from our research task force about the results of a survey of practitioners related to how they are using technology or impediments they feel that they experience with the use of technology. We got a lot of feedback, especially from smaller practitioners that will help us really focus on what aspects of using technology in an audit practitioners have the most questions on or what would be the most helpful to them.

We know everyone is on a journey to use technology as efficiently, safely, and effectively as possible and really in a rapidly changing technological landscape. I think the results of this survey will really help us understand from a standard-setting or other guidance perspective, where we can be most impactful to the success of practitioners on that journey.

Amato: You mentioned the IAASB putting out new standards. Is part of your collaboration and ability to be in line with some of these standard-setters that you’re aware of these in progress before they are officially released?

Creps: We monitor what they’re doing internationally, but we also try to be a little more involved in that. Because overall convergence is one of the things we look at and think about as we’re setting standards. We think globally consistent standards make sense. Obviously, there are sometimes differences for jurisdictional reasons or other reasons, but we do follow along very closely with what they’re doing and often use that as a starting point.

We also have a task force. The ASB has a task force that also provides insights to the U.S. jurisdictional board member on the IAASB. Making sure that we get the U.S. perspective upfront and in those discussions, I think, is also an important part of the process. Then in my role as the chair, I participate with a lot of other jurisdictional standard-setters in forums with the IAASB staff to give perspectives and things like that on some of their projects. We do have some input there to try to make sure we’re providing our perspectives and that the starting point that we’re using is something that we can use to develop our standards.

Amato: Thank you for that. Let’s look ahead to ENGAGE. It’s in June in Las Vegas. First, how many times have you been to ENGAGE, and two, what do you look forward to about being there?

Creps: I guess I’ll actually start with the last part of that question first. Of course, I’m interested in the wonderful topics and speakers and everything. But for me, one of the great things about it is networking. Last year was the first time that I got to attend, so that’ll answer the first part of your question. But I did get to meet a lot of great people through that process, and I’m really looking forward to catching up with them and then meeting new folks as well.

Amato: I look forward to me and you in person there as well because I’m going to be at ENGAGE for the first time in about seven years, so that’ll be great. That’ll be my second time also, just not in a row. Halie, anything else you’d like to add in closing? We’ve had a good conversation, covered a lot of ground here.

Creps: Again, just thank you for having me. This has been great and I can talk about this stuff for hours. I appreciate everyone hanging on for a couple of minutes for me.

Amato: Halie Creps, ASB chair, on the Journal of Accountancy podcast. This is Neil Amato. Thanks for listening.