Quality & Professional Practice Network
Our Quality & Professional Practice Network (the “Network”) is composed of national partners, principals, managing directors (PPMDs) and other professionals. This national team, which includes more than 140 partners, principals and managing directors, is supplemented by experienced regional and local professionals and supporting technology. The Network’s primary activities include: • Providing oversight, Leadership and direction on US and global quality activities; • Designing, operating and monitoring our SQC, including monitoring and inspecting our audits; • Providing consultation resources with deep technical knowledge in accounting, auditing, industry and risk; • Maintaining audit manuals, policies and guidance used by our professionals; • Developing publications, webcasts and videos covering a variety of accounting and financial Reporting topics; and • Engaging with regulators and standard-setters.
We have implemented quality monitoring programmes with oversight by various groups within the Network focused on the performance
of engagements in progress to assess the implementation of our quality priorities. These programmes are designed to provide feedback
to engagement teams, which can be incorporated into the audit prior to the issuance of the opinion. These programs also help inform
whether the actions taken to continuously improve audit quality are having the intended effect or whether we need further actions, such
Assurance Insight & Analysis
Our commitment to quality requires that we develop an in-depth understanding of factors that cause or contribute to audit quality outcomes. For engagements with unfavorable quality outcomes (e.g., inspection comments, material restatements of financial statements, reports on internal control over financial Reporting reissued or withdrawn), we interview engagement teams, review workpapers and analyse a wide range of quantitative and qualitative information to obtain a greater understanding of the engagement-specific circumstances that contributed to these outcomes. We perform similar procedures for engagement teams that exhibit an extraordinarily high level of audit quality. We analyse this information collectively to identify common trends or themes that are then considered in determining opportunities to continuously improve audit quality and defining best practices. In-flight monitoring Monitoring of a sample of engagements “in-flight” provides timely visibility into the effectiveness of updates or changes to the audit methodology and tools resulting from new standards or in response to feedback from internal and external monitoring activities. Inflight monitoring results are evaluated overall to determine whether additional communication and support to the Audit & Assurance business is needed with respect to adherence to the updates or changes to the audit methodology
