ACCA
Describe an occasion on which you had to demonstrate ethical behavior.
During my two years spent in an audit firm I have encountered several situations in which I had to consider several ethical issues. In most of the circumstances it was quite easy to demonstrate ethical behavior and to comply with the firm’s internal regulations.
However, I have recently encountered a very difficult situation. I was working for a client in the mobile phones industry. The audit team was composed of four people: 1 beginner assistant; 2 experienced audit assistants (I was one of them) and one semi- senior.
I had not previously worked with that particular semi – senior, so I prepared all my work according to the company’s audit procedures, which comply with the ISA and also with the National Standards. Since I began working in the firm I had never received serious complaints from the seniors or managers with whom I had been working.
This is why I was very surprised when the semi – senior I was currently working with gave me back all my working papers after briefly revising them and asked me to perform additional substantive tests which were in disagreement with the Audit Procedure. I was even more surprised when she asked me to delete some of the substantive tests I had already performed, allegedly because they were not required by the procedures. Although I knew I had performed my tests according to the procedures I checked the latest up-dated versions once again and tried to reason with her and show her that my sample sizes had been correctly computed. The same thing happened to my colleagues. We all tried to reason with her, but should not accept our opinions.
During my two years spent in an audit firm I have encountered several situations in which I had to consider several ethical issues. In most of the circumstances it was quite easy to demonstrate ethical behavior and to comply with the firm’s internal regulations.
However, I have recently encountered a very difficult situation. I was working for a client in the mobile phones industry. The audit team was composed of four people: 1 beginner assistant; 2 experienced audit assistants (I was one of them) and one semi- senior.
I had not previously worked with that particular semi – senior, so I prepared all my work according to the company’s audit procedures, which comply with the ISA and also with the National Standards. Since I began working in the firm I had never received serious complaints from the seniors or managers with whom I had been working.
This is why I was very surprised when the semi – senior I was currently working with gave me back all my working papers after briefly revising them and asked me to perform additional substantive tests which were in disagreement with the Audit Procedure. I was even more surprised when she asked me to delete some of the substantive tests I had already performed, allegedly because they were not required by the procedures. Although I knew I had performed my tests according to the procedures I checked the latest up-dated versions once again and tried to reason with her and show her that my sample sizes had been correctly computed. The same thing happened to my colleagues. We all tried to reason with her, but should not accept our opinions.