CT1.9 Rules governing the investment practices of individual certified public accountants prohibit them from investing in the stock of a company that their firm audits. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) became concerned that some accountants were violating this rule. In response to an SEC investigation, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) fired 10 people and spent $25 million educating employees about the investment rules and installing an investment tracking system.
a. Why do you think rules exist that restrict auditors from investing in companies that are audited by their firms?
b. Some accountants argue that they should be allowed to invest in a company’s stock as long as they themselves aren’t involved in working on the company’s audit or consulting. What do you think of this idea?
c. Today, a very high percentage of publicly traded companies are audited by only four very large public accounting firms. These firms also do a high percentage of the consulting work that is done for publicly traded companies. How does this fact complicate the decision regarding whether CPAs should be allowed to invest in companies audited by their firm?
d. Suppose you were a CPA and you had invested in IBM when IBM was not one of your firm’s clients. Two years later, after IBM’s stock price had fallen considerably, your firm won the IBM audit contract. You will be involved in working with the IBM audit. You know that your firm’s rules require that you sell your shares immediately. If you do sell immediately, you will sustain a large loss. Do you think this is fair? What would you do?
e. Why do you think PwC took such extreme steps in response to the SEC investigation?
attempt the skills in previous weeks fully engaged and asked questions like ‘’why can’t we use the iPad every week”. This comment proposes that they relished the use of the iPad and that engagement had improved in comparison to previous weeks. Again, this highlights how this change in environment (Garn et al, 2011) can have a different effect on the student’s motivation and engagement in lessons. Regarding the Teachers Standards, the engagement was excellent and graded one by the observing teacher (Appendix 7).
Although the climate was a motivational one, it was important that For the students to benefit from the iPad, they needed to be able to construct their learning socially. Resulting in the AT placing the students into specific groups as they were given a chance to construct knowledge through their interactions and engagements with others (Henderson and Yeow, 2012) and utilise the iPad to the highest level as student-produced digital video encourages active problem-based learning (Pellett et al, 2009) and higher -order thinking skills (Fu, 2013) creating challenge (Appendix 11) . The iPad was used to help students develop their skills through AfL (Appendix 11). The observing teacher wrote down on the observation sheet that ‘the iPad focuses the pupils on assessing their routine and making improvements’. The observing teacher then went on to say in a professional discussion that ‘’it was the best approach for the learning environment the students were in” and that it ‘’was clear to see that students had made progress due to being able to construct and assess learning in groups”. These comments highlight how well the iPad and the learning environment it created worked concerning pupil progress. It was evident to see the student’s social skills were developing as discussions between students were very informative with a clear aim of students wanting to develop their sequences which link back to the objectives of the lesson (Appendix 3) and the progress teaching standard(Appendix 11).
Moreover, it was evident that students were being challenged and the pitch of the lesson was right (Appendix 11) as, during students’ discussions, most of the students were thoroughly conversating to a high level. During this point, the AT and the observing teacher discussed the situation with each other where the observing teacher highlighted that ‘the use of the iPad was developing their cognitive and social skills at this point because they were figuring out how to improve their physical ability through social situations. In Contrary, the observing teacher specified in the same the lesson ‘’students have more of an understanding of the keywords and what they needed to improve, resulting in them showcasing higher level thinking skills, asking more questions and socialising to improve”. This evidence shows that the iPad can have an extraordinary impact on pupils’ progress as a whole. This is further backed up by the questionnaire where a student