Host: TK Kerstetter
Guest: Erin Dwyer, Managing Director of Stakeholder Engagement & Communications at the Center for Audit Quality

Audit committees are increasingly coming under scrutiny from investors who want transparency about how the committee carries out its duties. While disclosure of financial reporting information is strictly regulated, the same is not true of disclosure of other audit committee duties – in particular, the role of appointing and overseeing the external auditor.

Although external audits by auditors are not mandatory, more and more boards of directors are taking the offensive and implementing and communicating their own processes for assessment by external auditors.

The Center for Audit Quality (CAQ) has a long history of developing tools to help audit committees work more effectively. The External Auditor Assessment Tool is a resource that guides audit committees through the assessment process. The tool provides a sample set of questions that audit committees can use to evaluate the external auditor. Updated for 2019, the guide takes into account new accounting standards (e.g., Audit Report, Form AP) as well as emerging risk areas such as cybersecurity.

In this episode, Erin Dwyer, Managing Director of Stakeholder Engagement & Communications at CAQ, discusses the trends in voluntary audit committee disclosure with moderator TK Kerstetter. In this episode:

– How can external auditor evaluations improve audit committee effectiveness?
– What questions should audit committees use to evaluate the auditor?

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