审计丑闻对“四大”提出严肃考验
From the shambles of the Oscars ceremony to the more serious matters of US lawsuits and UK regulatory investigations, it has been a difficult year for PwC. Its rival KPMG is hardly faring better. The Big Four accountancy firm was castigated by Senator Elizabeth Warren for failing to spot dubious practice at the lender Wells Fargo. Now its auditing of Rolls-Royce is under investigation in the UK after the engineering company admitted bribery and corruption offences going back 20 years.
从奥斯卡(Oscars)颁奖礼上的乌龙到更为严肃的美国诉讼和英国监管机构调查问题，普华永道(PwC)这一年过得不轻松。其竞争对手毕马威(KPMG)的日子也没好到哪里去。因未能发现富国银行(Wells Fargo)的可疑行为，这家全球四大会计师事务所之一受到参议员伊丽莎白?沃伦(Elizabeth Warren)的严厉指责。如今，毕马威对罗尔斯?罗伊斯公司(Rolls-Royce)的审计工作正在英国接受调查，此前，这家工程公司承认了可追溯至20年前的行贿和腐败罪行。These scandals are not on the grand scale of the Enron fraud, which led to Arthur Andersen’s demise. Yet they highlight the failure of the accountancy profession and its regulators to resolve, in the intervening 15 years, the fundamental question of how far auditors should be expected to go in their efforts to uncover bad behaviour.
这些丑闻的规模比不上安然(Enron)欺诈事件，后者导致安达信会计师事务所(Arthur Andersen)覆灭。然而，这些丑闻突显出，在安然覆灭之后这15年时间里，会计行业以及监管机构未能解决这个基本问题：审计公司应该在多大程度上努力揭发不当行为。
The rules require them to “obtain reasonable assurance” that accounts are “free of material misstatement”. This leaves considerable scope for interpretation. Auditors should be on the lookout for fraud, as well as innocent error, and are expected to conduct checks to try to detect it, especially in areas that account for a significant proportion of a company’s balance sheet.
规定要求审计机构“有适度的把握”财务报表“没有重大虚假陈述”。这一表述为不同解读留下了巨大空间。审计机构应提防欺诈行为以及无心之过，并应该进行核查，以努力发现欺诈行为，特别是在占一家公司资产负债表重大比例的领域。
However, auditors have always argued that it is not their job to pursue evidence of wrongdoing, second guess management or find out when they are being lied to. An audit will never have the rigour of a forensic investigation — at least, not unless companies pay significantly higher fees.
然而，审计机构一直主张，追查不当行为的证据、猜测管理层想法或者查实客户公司何时撒谎，并非它们的职责。审计工作从来不是严格的司法调查，至少，除非客户公司支付高得多的费用，否则审计机构不会这么做。What is clear is that there is a wide gap between auditors’ own idea of how far their responsibilities stretch and the expectations of investors and the general public. The creditors of failed companies are increasingly inclined to hold their auditors responsible. The accountancy firms are predictably reluctant to see these questions tested in court — judging by PwC’s settlement of the lawsuits brought against it by the administrators of the failed mortgage lender Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, and the failed broker MF Global. This is regrettable. Greater clarity is needed on the scope of auditors’ responsibilities — and on the costs this may entail.
显然，审计机构认为自己负有的责任，与投资者和普通大众期待它们担负的责任之间，有着巨大差距。破产公司的债权人越来越倾向于要求审计机构承担责任。可以想见，审计机构不愿让这些问题在法庭上见分晓，这一点从如下事例中就可以看出来：破产了的抵押贷款机构Taylor、 Bean & Whitaker和经纪商MF Global的破产受托人对普华永道提起诉讼，而普华永道就这些诉讼达成了和解。这令人遗憾。我们需要更加明确审计机构的责任范围，以及由此可能需要的费用。A larger question, though, is whether the structure of the industry encourages cosiness between auditors and the companies they scrutinise.
然而，一个更重要的问题是，审计行业的结构是否鼓励了审计机构与被审计公司互相通融。Recent efforts to bolster auditors’ independence have been timid. Limits on the cross-selling of non-audit services need tightening. New EU rules require companies to switch auditor only after 20 years, yet even this presents difficulties: in an oligopoly of four, companies can struggle to switch even when they wish to, since rivals are often selling them other services.
最近加强审计机构独立性的措施显得有些缺乏胆量。需要加强对交叉销售非审计服务的限制。新的欧盟规定要求公司每20年更换审计机构，甚至这也带来了难题：在全球四大会计师事务所的垄断下，公司可能很难更换审计机构，即便它们希望这么做，因为竞争对手经常会向它们销售其他服务。Four big firms is clearly not a large enough field to guarantee healthy competition. Opening up the ownership of auditing firms may yet be the only way to restore the sector’s reputation.
全球只有四大会计师事务所，显然无法保证健康竞争。开放审计机构所有权或许是挽回该行业声誉的唯一方式。
