题目内容
Because non-audit work is important to Hum and Hoo, staff have ‘business growth’ criteria strongly linked with bonuses and promotion. This means that many of the professional accountants in the firm actively seek to increase sales of non-audit services to businesses in the Deetown area, including from audit clients. The culture of the firm is such that everybody is expected to help out with any project which needs to be done, and this sometimes means that staff help out on a range of both audit and non-audit tasks. The lines between audit and non-audit services are sometimes blurred and staff may work on either, as workload needs demand. Managing partner Cherry Hoo told staff that the non-audit revenue is now so important to the firm that staff should not do anything to threaten that source of income.
Cherry Hoo said that she was thinking of beginning to offer a number of other services including advice on environmental reporting and the provision of environmental auditing services. She said she had spoken to local companies which were looking to demonstrate their environmental sustainability and she believed that environmental reporting and auditing might be ways to help with this. She said she was confused by the nature of environmental reporting and so was not sure about what should be audited.
Required:
(a) Explain ‘ethical threat’ and ‘ethical safeguard’ in the context of external auditing, and discuss the benefits of effective ethical safeguards for Hum and Hoo. (8 marks)
(b) Explain ‘environmental audit’ and assess how environmental reporting and auditing might enable companies to ‘demonstrate their environmental sustainability’ as Cherry Hoo suggested. (8 marks)
(c) Some corporate governance codes prohibit audit firms such as Hum and Hoo from providing some non-audit services to audit clients without the prior approval of the client’s audit committee. This is because it is sometimes believed to be against the public interest.
Required:
Explain ‘public interest’ in the context of accounting services and why a client’s audit committee is a suitable body to advise on the purchase of non-audit services from Hum and Hoo. (9 marks)
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Mahmood is a junior employee of Tzo Company (a large, listed company). Tzo is a processor of food labelled as containing only high quality meat. The company enjoys the trust and confidence of its customers because of its reputation for high quality products. One day, when passing through one area of the plant, Mahmood noticed some inferior meat being mixed with the normal product. He felt this must be unauthorised so he informed his supervisor, the factory manager, who told Mahmood that this was in fact a necessary cost reduction measure because company profits had been declining in recent months. Mahmood later found out that all stages of the production process, from purchasing to final quality control, were adapted in order to make the use of the inferior meat possible.
The factory manager told Mahmood that the inferior meat was safe for humans to eat and its use was not illegal. However, he told Mahmood that if knowledge of the use of this meat was made public, it would mean that customers might stop buying the products. Many jobs could be lost, probably including Mahmood’s own. The factory manager ordered Mahmood to say nothing about the inferior meat and to conduct his job as normal. Mahmood later discovered that the main board of Tzo was aware of the use of the inferior meat and supported its use in seeking to reduce costs and maintain profits. In covering up the use of the inferior meat, the factory produced a fraudulent quality control report to show that the product was purely based on high quality meat when the company knew that this was not so.
When Mahmood heard this, he was very angry and considered telling an external source, such as the local newspaper, about what he had seen and about how the company was being dishonest with its customers.
Required:
(a) Explain how Mahmood might act, in each case, if he were to adopt either conventional or post-conventional ethical assumptions according to Kohlberg’s definitions of these terms. Your answer should include an explanation of these two terms. (8 marks)
(b) Construct an ethical case for Mahmood to take this matter directly to an external source such as a newspaper. (8 marks)
(c) Some jurisdictions have a compulsory regulatory requirement for an auditor-reviewed external report on the operation and effectiveness of internal controls (such as s.404 of Sarbanes Oxley).
Required:
Explain how such a requirement may have helped to prevent the undisclosed use of the inferior meat at Tzo Company. (9 marks)
Section B – TWO questions ONLY to be attempted
Bob Wong was fortunate to inherit some money and decided he wanted to invest for the long term in one or more investments so he would have a higher income in retirement. He was not a specialist in accounting and had little understanding of how investments worked.
Bob studied an investment website which suggested that he needed to be aware of the level of risk in an investment and also that he needed to know what his basic attitude to risk would be. This meant he needed to decide what his risk appetite was and then select investments based on that.
When Bob studied share listings in newspapers, he noticed that they were subdivided into sectors (e.g. banks, pharmaceuticals, mining, retail). He noticed that some sectors seemed to make higher returns than others and he wanted to know why this was. One website suggested that risks also varied by sector and this was partly explained by the different business and financial risks which different sectors are exposed to.
One website said that if a potential investor wanted to know about any given company as a potential investment, the company’s most recent annual report was a good place to start. This was because, it said, the annual report contained a lot of voluntary information, in addition to the financial statements. Bob could use this information to gain an understanding of the company’s strategy and governance. The website suggested that the contents of the corporate governance section of the annual report would be particularly helpful in helping him decide whether or not to buy shares in a company.
Required:
(a) Explain ‘risk appetite’ and ‘risk awareness’, and discuss how Bob’s risk appetite might affect his choice of investments.
(8 marks) (b) Explain ‘business risk’ and ‘financial risk’ and discuss why risks might vary by sector as the website indicated. (8 marks)
(c) Distinguish, with examples, between mandatory and voluntary disclosure in annual reports, and assess the usefulness of corporate governance disclosure to Bob in selecting his investments. (9 marks)
慢性淋巴细胞白血病时的血象中，数量最多的白细胞是
静脉血栓形成时水平或活性可降低的指标是
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