Audit Firms Earning Money From Non-Audit Services

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There is certainly a potential for a conflict of interest when audit firms earn a significant amount of money from non-audit services provided to their audit clients. The primary purpose of an audit is to provide an independent and objective assessment of an organization's financial statements, which is essential to maintain public trust in financial reporting. However, if the audit firm also provides non-audit services such as consulting, tax, or IT services to the same audit client, it may become difficult to maintain the required independence and objectivity.
The concern arises from the fact that if the audit firm becomes too reliant on non-audit service fees, it may be hesitant to jeopardize that income stream by making unfavorable findings in the audit. This potential conflict of interest could undermine the integrity of the audit process, which could have severe consequences for the financial reporting and decision-making processes of the organization and its stakeholders.
According to this week’s notes, “Even when you apply your best professional judgment and interpretation, errors will happen.” This means that aside from being prone to conflict of interest, auditors are always bound to make mistakes when making independent judgments on financial transactions and financial reporting. Therefore, when an audit firm earns from providing non-audit services for a firm that it does audits for, it is likely to cover up the errors that it does on its audits. This is why clients need to have one firm provide non-audit services and pair it with another independent external auditor to verify the correctness of the non-audit services delivered. Reports from an independent auditor will be more objective than reports from the same firm that performs non-audit services.