Arthur and Anderson employees and managers being stakeholders of the AA auditing company were supposed to exercise professionalism by practicing independence as required by the accounting profession. In addition, they were supposed to be independent from Enron Company to which was their client as international standard on auditing and internal. For example they were not supposed to be part of Enron’s employees and should not have taken part in the internal audit of the company. Besides they were supposed to give a true view of Enron’s financial statements as per there knowledge and skills in accounting and auditing./>
Instead, AA professionals built a strong relationship with Enron their employer company which is against the international standards of audit. They became part of the Enron employees the company they were supposed to audit and give an opinion on their financial statements status. As a matter of fact, the relationship between the AA professionals led to development of non-professional relationships that led to marriages among the staffs. They even took part in the selling of some of the Enron’s auditing services and consulting projects which against the accounting professionalism (Langevoort 116).
Moreover, some of the AA professionals took part in conducting internal audit Enron as well as external audit. In order to exercise professionalism in auditing ISA provides that an auditing company cannot take part in both internal and external audits of a company. Finally, some of the managers like Richard Causey violated the accounting professionalism that provides that a member of an auditing company should not have worked for a company to who they audit. However, in the case of Enron and AA, Richard Causey who was a manager of AA moved into a top management position in Enron. All this events violated both IFRS and ISA’s provisions.
