Christopher Brown has been appointed as a junior auditor of Apex Chartered Accountants (ACA). One of his first tasks is to review the firm's audit clients (all public interest entities) to ensure that independence requirements of APES 110 (Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants) are being met. His review has revealed the following:

Grand Auto Limited (GAL) is an audit client of ACA. GAL has requested that ACA help in designing as well as implementing a new IT system for GAL, arranging interviews for GAL's hiring of new personnel, and providing advice on structuring GAL's corporate finance transactions.

1. Identify potential threat(s) to independence & recommend safeguards (if any) to reduce the independence threat(s) identified.
2. Provide an objective assessment of whether audit independence can be achieved.