The American electorate has just selected a new president in one of the most interesting and important presidential campaigns in American history. Both of the major presidential candidates accused the other of being untrustworthy and not competent to serve as president of the United States.
Thank goodness there’s a group of financial professionals who have the trust of the American people.
CPAs were accorded the highest trust among financial professionals in a 2015 survey by Applied Research & Consulting LLC. The CPA profession also enjoys a high satisfaction rating from business decision-makers, according to another recent survey. Ninety percent of these decision-makers were very or somewhat satisfied with internal CPAs, 93 percent of the decision-makers were very or somewhat satisfied with external CPAs, and 97 percent of investors were very or somewhat satisfied with CPAs in general.
It’s not surprising that CPAs rank so highly among financial professionals when you consider the CPAs Code of Professional Conduct. CPAs are required to be objective and perform services with integrity and to only perform services for which they have the technical competence. If the service is an attest function — i.e., audit or review — the CPA is also required to be independent. CPAs must comply with thousands of pages of accounting, auditing, consulting, code of conduct and other professional standards in providing services to clients.
CPAs working in business are responsible for the accurate recording of financial accounting transactions in the United States. CPAs in public practice are responsible for providing independent opinions concerning the fairness of the presentation of financial statements.
CPAs also provide a host of other types of services, including business valuations, tax services, loss profits, fraud investigations, risk analysis, internal control reviews and other services. All kinds of entities rely on the financial statements prepared by and audited by CPAs: investors, lenders, corporations, partnerships, proprietorships, individuals, vendors, customers and local, state and federal governments.
President Ronald Reagan said we must “trust but verify.” Clients select CPAs they trust. Even though CPAs are required to have 40 hours of continuing professional education courses annually, the profession is also monitored by the Arkansas State Board of Public Accountancy and others to ensure high-quality services are delivered to clients.
Legislation is being proposed in the next session of the Arkansas General Assembly that would hold CPAs in Arkansas to even higher standards. It would require any Arkansas CPA selected to perform attest service to enter a CPA services monitoring system designed to ensure high-quality CPA services and services that meet CPA professional standards.
The monitoring process for CPAs in public practice is referred to as “peer review” or “auditing the auditor.” Arkansas is the only state in the nation that doesn’t require peer review. The Arkansas Society of CPAs and the Arkansas State Board of Public Accountancy have drafted legislation to address this shortfall in our statutes and bring the accounting standards in this state up to the same level as those in the other 49 states. You may contact the Arkansas Society of CPAs at (501) 664-8739 to obtain the bill numbers after the legislative session begins in January.
The CPA profession in Arkansas has developed significantly over the past 100 years. The Arkansas Society of CPAs is celebrating its centennial on Dec. 1. The society began operation on Sept. 11, 1916, with only 10 CPAs. Society membership is over 3,600 today, so it should be easy for Arkansans to find a highly qualified licensed professional CPA.
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CPA Jerry Spratt is president of the Arkansas Society of CPAs and is a certified fraud examiner and president and founder of Spratt Financial Forensics Inc. of Maumelle. Email him at SPrattJE@SWBell.net. |