This refers to Asish K Bhattacharyya's article "Accounting profession: Fallen from grace?" (March 18). The malaise lying with audits can be traced to senior professionals delegating the auditing work to juniors owing to its sheer volume. With no requisite experience, these juniors are clueless about any falsification of accounts. This has also led to most auditors working mechanically, without even cross-checking facts for a possible detection of fraud. Moreover, the auditing team goes by the brand name of companies (read Satyam, WorldCom and Enron) and adopts a complacent approach towards auditing their records. Even boards of directors have not been able to check on managements' tendency to falsify accounts (read Satyam). The presence of independent directors (who are eminent people in their own right) has not improved matters of governance.
K V Rao, Bangalore
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