As AccountingWEB notes:

The Financial Reporting Council has criticised the Big Four for lack of ‘professional scepticism’ and failure to meet ethical standards in its latest audit inspection report.

Despite the quality of firms’ policies and procedures, the number of audits assessed by the  Audit Inspection Unit (AIU) - which forms part of the Financial Reporting Council — as requiring ‘significant improvements’ remains too high, said the report.

The key findings of the inspections were:

• The firms have policies and procedures in place to support audit quality that are generally appropriate to their size and the nature of their client base.
• Despite the quality of the firms’ policies and procedures, the number of audits assessed by the AIU as requiring significant improvement remains too high.
• The findings suggest that the firms are not always applying:
  • Their procedures consistently on all aspects of individual audits;
  • Sufficient professional scepticism in relation to key audit judgments.
• Firms need to embrace more fully the principles underlying the Ethical Standards and, in particular, accept that non-audit services should not be provided to audit clients where appropriate safeguards do not exist.

When these firms can do their own jobs properly; when these firms understand ethics; when these firms can use sufficient professional scepticism (shall we cal it competence?); when these firms can show they can do much, much more than write a procedures manual then they might have something to say that the rest of us might listen to.

But right now these firms seem unable to live up to their own standards, let alone those expected of them by the rest of us.

It’s a sorry tale.

Repeated in secrecy jurisdictions around the world — where the one uniting feature is the presence of these firms.