Recommeded Reading For CPAs: Spam Nation

While small CPA firms are often vulnerable in terms of protecting their clients' personally identifiable information, the Big four firms aren't particularly breach proof either in terms of safeguarding personally identifiable information.  Despite the firm policies and all the CPEs on this topic that the Big 4 Firms use to increase awareness of the firms' employees to the theft and misuse of personally identifiable information (PII), it's all up to the employees who have access to the personally identifiable information to follow the rules and be cautious.  The mere size of the Big 4 firms makes it almost impossible to ensure that everybody who handles or who has access to the personally identifiable information is going to be very cautious and is following the information security rules.  It's because there are just too many people in the big four firms who handle clients' PII, many of them are new college grads who just got hired, more of them are offshore employees and outsourced contractors in India. PII just passes too many hands in the Big 4 due to the size of the firms and the high employees turnover.  Many new college hires don't even know or care about the significance of PII because they are so young and inexperienced.  They received some training on this but their mentality just doesn't take this seriously.  The more experienced managers and senior managers are also young and naive about the seriousness of identity thefts and the consequence of a breach of PII security to the firms and their clients.

In the small firms, many professionals there don't even know what PII is all about, or do they have a clue as to how to safeguard it.  I recommend all the CPAs to do yourselves and the public a favor and read this book, so you don't smirk and just brush it off casually next time when someone talks to you about safeguarding PII.

Do You Need A Master Degree in Auditing To Serve As A Maid???

Obviously you do, according to one of the Big 4 that brags about being the best big 4 accounting firm to work for.... or to wait on???

This is one of the most rotten and wasteful practice in any accounting firm. The smallest accounting firms don't make any associate drive around town to buy the managers and partners coffee.  They don't make the associates work as take-out delivery boys and girls either. Even the smallest of the small 4 accounting firms know that it's cheaper just to give a few dollars' tips for delivery service than sending college grads and associates who passed the CPA exams to go buy lunches, dinners, snacks, coffees,  do post-office runs and other errands.  I sincerely hope no CPA candidate is cleaning toilets in any of the big 4.

From one of my cousins who has been working with this so-called very women-friendly Big 4 firm since her passage of her CPA exam and her graduation of her Master Degree in Accounting, most of her work experience in her 6 months of employment  in this "prestigious" firm has been stuffing many many envelopes, making many copies, filing long expense reimbursement reports because she was made to buy so many dinners,  lunches, coffees and had to run many non-audit related errands that her firm sponsored credit card bills are  flying through the roof.  She has been spending a lot of time talking to the internal audit department to respond to questions from the T&E auditors. I don't blame the T&E auditors either, the parking expenses charged on my cousin's credit card in any one day is outrageous.  The numerous parking tickets from the same expensive parking lot in the same day do look suspicious to any T&E auditors who don't know her story. I guess this answers her question as to why the managers and partners in her firm rarely volunteer their firm sponsored credit cards to pay for some of those so-called engagement related business expenses.  Getting the reimbursement from the firm can be a pain and a hassle.  Managers and partners often don't want even to charge their own meals on their own credit cards probably because they don't want to spend time to do their expense reports and explain the charges to the internal auditors.  To me, running most of the expenses through the young associates' credit cards are so unethical.  I was so appalled when my cousin told me this.  In my entire life working in public accounting, I had never worked in a firm that has this practice... I am shocked this is the accepted culture in the big 4 firm.

Instead of dragging the audit into a 12 + hours day, why can't the audit team make good use of the intellectual power within the team and delegate more audit work to the highly educated associates???  What benefits do the audits get when the engagement teams are sending off the CPA candidates  to work as maids and servants on duties that are not really related to the engagements?  In one way or another, the audit clients are paying for these unproductive hours that my cousin and her peers spent on that had nothing to do with the audits, regardless of how the firm can explain its way into saying such meals and coffee breaks are indeed vital to the audit engagements that they can't possibly let anyone who don't have an accounting degree to do them....

Review question on this blog post:  How can any accounting firm that can't effectively make good use of its human resource be trusted to produce an effective audit that the public can rely upon???  Please feel free to leave your answers in the comment area below.