ASQ Team Offers Comments on Financial Auditing Standards and Rules to Government Agencies

A team from ASQ’s Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Community responded to calls from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board for comments on proposed rules and accounting standards.  The rules and standards relate to ways in which public companies are required to exert internal control over financial reporting.   

The ASQ team was headed by ASQ Fellow Burton S. (Sandy) Liebesman and included Paul Palmes, John Walz, Donna Spencer and Marty Jaeger.

The proposed rules and standards arise from attempts to deal with some of the controversy in the financial community and American management since passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley law. The law imposed stringent requirements on management to verify the accuracy of financial reporting. 

“We have shown that the quality and environmental management systems (QMS/EMS) experience of public companies can directly affect SOX compliance,” stated Liebesman.  “Our team is working to educate the quality, environmental and financial professions on ways that can happen.”

The comments provide a point-by-point identification of parallels and complementarities between QMS/EMS provisions and features in the proposed PCAOB auditing standard and SEC rule.

View the comments on the ASQ SOX Community Web site.