Creating a Capstone Auditing Experience

• In Event: Reception with ELS Posters

Abstract

One of the primary challenges in teaching an auditing course is to make the material “real” to the students. In particular, during the first few weeks of the course, students are perplexed and often unmotivated by the theoretical nature of the discipline. Introducing auditing cases into the curriculum breaks the monotony, but existing auditing cases are either based on large publicly held corporations, or are fictional creations of an author. Many students report that they cannot really “relate” to the large company scenario, and are not likely to ever audit a Fortune 500 type of company. They also report that the fictional cases just don’t seem real.
By partnering with a local business that is privately owned, we have been able to create a real life audit case that takes students from the initial receipt of a request for proposal through the client acceptance decision. Students are asked to assume the role of an audit staff member of a hypothetical CPA firm. Instructions for each part of the case are sent to the student by email from the “audit senior,” who is too busy to do a lot of the legwork associated with the client acceptance decision. Students research the company, the industry, and the owners and executives. They perform analytics, attend a walk-through of the manufacturing facility, meet with the management, and document their findings in various memoranda to the audit senior and the audit partner.
The primary benefits of the project include: 1) enhancing engagement of students through the use of real people, places and things; 2) providing a vehicle to require students to sort through information to prioritize relevance and to eliminate unnecessary items; 3) requiring students to practice their written communication skills by responding appropriately in written form (emails and memoranda); 4) requiring students to work under time and deadline constraints to complete tasks and submit them for review by the audit senior; and, 5) allowing students to explore and learn about some of the nuances of private business enterprises.

Author

• Susan L Swanger, Western Carolina University