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Auditing has I expect changed because how business operates has changed.
Auditing what can be seen is always simple (your I hope tongue in cheek comments re casting numbers) the difficulty is what about the unseen and difficult to measure, that is more like checking an iceberg.
Completeness is always difficult to check. Scrooge & Marley merely had to check Bob's ledgers, they could be pretty sure he was not lending their money to others off the books, they would have heard about what he was doing at the Exchange. Well Scrooge would , Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.
Your Victorian did not have those ever so complex building contract where calculating the completion percentage of a railway bridge re profit recognition was all well and good but they also had to consider the maintenance contract thereafter for the next thirty years when evaluating profit recognition. Life was simpler.
There is also attitude; we were all taught that an auditor was a watchdog not a bloodhound, however I somehow think that approach was alien to the earlier generations.
When I was interviewed for my apprenticeship it went something like this.
" Sit down"
I sat facing a large man wreathed in smoke peering at me across an enormous desk with files to the left of him files to the right, stacked in towers.
"Do you smoke",
After my confirming I did an open packet of Benson and Hedges were chucked across the desk at me with the comment,
"Don't burn the papers"
The next salvo was,
"Bit old to start are you not"
(I was 25 and had worked before University and also between my first non accountancy degree and my PG conversion course) .
Having got past the niceties like these it was then down to the real business,
"Why would you do a bank reconciliation"
I mumbled the response about checking the bank was correct and all the theoretical stuff I had ingested at university, having never actually seen a real cash book or done a real reconciliation.After I finished my answer his response barked back across,
"Fraud, ye dae it ta detect if someone is stealing",
Somehow the watchdog/bloodhound bit seemed to have passed him by.
Now I am not sure all CAs of his generation (qualified I suspect 1940s) were the same, or maybe it was just Glasgow CAs that were so robust, or maybe it was a generation thing; the interview reminded me of talking with a friend of my father who was a Police Superintendent where even good evening held menace.
So I expect the answer lies in business being more complex but auditors being less intimidating and cynical.
One of the few things money cannot buy is independence. And that is why the audit model - particularly the audit model as practice by partnerships where partners are assessed on fee income - is broken.
What reputation Philip? You have tax advisers selling tax schemes, to fill their deep pockets, that results in losses of billions in tax revenues and you talk about the reputation of the profession!