Chris Walters has been appointed as a junior auditor of Awesome Accounting Limited (AAL). One of his first tasks is to review the firm's audit clients to ensure that independence requirements of APES 110 (Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants) are being met. His review has revealed the following:

(a) AAL has recently been approached by Western Mining Limited (WML) to conduct its audit. The accountant at WML, Bridget Johnstone is the daughter of one of AAL's audit partner Michael Hicks. Being aware of Michael's relationship with Bridget, AAL will not be assigning Michael to the audit team of WML.

For each of the independent situations above, and using the conceptual framework in APES 110 (Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants), answer the following questions:

1. Identify potential threat(s) to independence & recommend safeguards (if any) to reduce the independence threat(s) identified. (5 marks)

2. Provide an objective assessment of whether audit independence can be achieved