Auditor's Search for Materiality

There was once a group of very famous accountants and auditors who joined together as a mutual study group. They determined that they could find the basic truths of auditing. They read all manner of philosophical, scientific, and religious works and discussed those theories amongst themselves. They felt that knowledge of the pure truths of auditing would form a basis for discovering the core truths of business and, indeed, life itself.

They studied the great works of accounting for many years, but felt that they were getting nowhere. Finally, they decided to take leave of their day jobs and search the world to find the answer. They sought the advice of great teachers the world over. They would ask each great teacher to recommend one who was even wiser. Thus, they collected these recommendations until their search pointed to one man - a teacher of teachers.

The group journeyed to an isolated area in the great dessert wastes of Africa. There they met the great man, and paying their respects, they told him of their heart-felt desire and long suffering to find the pure truths of auditing. He said, "I cannot give you the answers. These you must find yourself." He instructed them to collect all the world's accounting knowledge, encompassing everything from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 back to cuneiform tablets of 3400 BCE. Then they were to condense all that knowledge to ten volumes.

The group went away and gathered and summarized knowledge for all the ages. After years of work, they again sat at the feet of the teacher of teachers and presented their ten volumes. The sage picked up the volumes and thumbed through them. He handed the volumes back to the group and then said, "Go and make this into one volume."

After years of toil, the group, whose membership was now thinning appreciably, returned with their one volume of the world's audit truths. The teacher of teachers said, "Make this into one sentence."

Taking on this almost impossible task, the remaining members of the group locked themselves into a cave and ate nothing but soup made of nettles to sustain them until they came up with the one true answer. When they returned to the guru with this sentence, he smiled and said to them, "You got it." This was the sentence.

"There is no such thing as a free lunch."

Why can we expect that a fraud that works now may not work in the future?

Why can a company not continue to grow indefinitely at 15 percent per year?

Why can a management who make up fictitious sales not profit in the long run?

Why does every form of earnings manipulation have its cost?

Based on this one sentence, how would you justify the existence of ethics?