don’t try to wear too many hats. pick your specialty area and become a guru.

by alan anderson, cpa
transforming audit for the future

industry expertise is essential for businessmindedness. for me, the primary ingredient for building a successful audit practice is to avoid taking on work that you don’t understand. too many firms say they can audit any balance sheet, but that’s when they can get into trouble. many firms get sued because they made a bad business decision. they thought they could take on this unique industry and get it right. if you dabble in any industry, you will put your firm and yourself at tremendous risk.

more: four questions to make your firm more successful as a business | move to advisory and assurance with relevance | how ‘business expert cpas’ get their own business wrong | say adios to audit fee pressure | eight items to cover in the audit exit to deepen client relationships and prove value | know your three audit w’s | planning lays the foundation of audit relevance | how do we drive relevance in audit? | before the audit: more than just planning | are you correctly identifying the relevance intersection? | lack of relevance drives audit commoditization
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when the u.s. department of labor looked at the quality of employee benefit plan (ebp) audits, they found plenty of problems. that 2014 study found “a clear link between the number of employee benefit plan audits performed by a cpa and the quality of the audit work performed.” almost half of the firms the dol looked at performed only one or two ebp audits per year, and 75 percent of those had deficiencies. over half of those (56%) had five or more deficiencies.

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