Believe or Disbelieve - The Ideal Accountant Mindset- Professional Skepticism

Learning Objectives

• To develop an appropriate and effective level of professional skepticism.
• To analyse when to use professional skepticism to achieve minimum audit process standards.
• To practice how to get what you need as an auditor.
• To discuss how professional skepticism works as a powerful tool, and why it is an absolute requirement.
• To discuss some tricks and see examples of solving particularly delicate situations.

Course Description

To believe or disbelieve, is the question often faced by CPAs in public accounting and by accountants and finance professionals in business and industry. This online CPE webinar addresses the mindset of professional skepticism that is often required in a variety of settings.

Meeting the requirement of applying professional skepticism during an audit is often quite a challenge. However, it is an expected skill the auditor must master if they want to produce valuable audits.

Audit inspection reports have identified issues about the level and consistency of professional skepticism being applied in audits, in particular, in areas that require high levels of professional judgment. Additionally, the complexity of transactions and markets continues to increase, requiring auditors and managers to use more professional judgment during audit engagements. Professional skepticism is influenced by personal behavioral traits as well as the knowledge level of the individuals undertaking the audit. This highly interactive online continuing professional education course uses case studies to provide an overview of professional skepticism, including what it is and why it is important in audit engagements.

By using this online CPE webinar’s overview of professional skepticism in auditing, you will have an opportunity to hone this necessary value-add skill.

Although professional skepticism is as much an art as it is a science, applying professional skepticism is a series of deliberate, exact steps that are tempered with solid judgment and even a little intuition.

Major Topics Covered in this online CPE webinar:

• How the PCAOB sets out expectations for the use of professional skepticism?
• How to use differing yet very effective levels of skepticism?
• How to resolve ambiguous audit data?
• How to deal with material that puts into doubt the dependability of records?
• How to manage information that is not supportive of the audit?
• How to recognize situations that might be attempts at fraud by management or employees?
• How to successfully settle with management that might be hiding pertinent data?

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Overview

• Key components of professional skepticism

  12 mins
• What is Authenticity?

  22 mins
• Knowing when professional skepticism is used

  35 mins
• Others using professional skepticism

  52 mins
• Related party relationships and disclosures

  69 mins
• Shared responsibility

  87 mins