On Sun, 5 Aug 2012 04:08:09 -0400, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote: > >>It has been discussed, repeatedly, in these pages that the proper >>function of an auditor is to assess conformance to standards, >>government or corporate, > >But not to devise their own standards. > ... >>Of course, if the standards > >What standards? They didn't cite any. > On Fri, 3 Aug 2012 15:21:06 +0000, Chicklon, Thomas wrote: > > ...the auditor wrote a finding for the mainframe server not running > the corporate _standard_ antivirus product. > [empnasis added]
Sounds like a standard to me. My conjecture is that in the Federal instance the auditor was also guided by a standard, not inventing one; at worst taking it out of context. I guess you're allowed to argue that Thomas informally used "standard" where "modal" would have been more appropriate. On Fri, 3 Aug 2012 17:55:06 -0400, John Gilmore wrote: >If Paul Gilmartin's contention were correct auditors would be >dispensable, replaceable by a program. In fact they are retained to >exercise professional judgment, and the standard language in which >they sign off on financial results reflects this unambiguously. > ... with which I'm unfamiliar. I should hope the convention is to mention the deviation and remark that it's inconsequential. I'd expect that in other cases the auditor reports exactly objective facts of deviations, and the judgment of consequentiality is left to the party to whom he reports. In most cases, I'd hope that such inconsequential deviations should be tolerated for only (placement of adverb?) a very few audit cycles, after which it's expected that the standard is amended to conform to reality. -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
