Please feel free to contact me anytime to share your thoughts.
In May I wrote about the issue of whether accounting fraud is a compliance or ethics issue. Since then, I’ve thought more about the accounting and financial reporting function and, more specifically, why it seems to be off-limits to so many compliance functions.
Perhaps the fact that compliance professionals are not experts in the technical aspects of accounting and financial reporting is one of the reasons. However, just like other areas involving highly complex rules, laws, and regulations, the application of the framework of a comprehensive compliance program to any area is distinct from technical knowledge involved in that area. Compliance professionals have implemented and operated effective compliance programs in many areas in which they are not technical experts — why shouldn’t they in accounting and financial reporting?
