Today you had lunch with your friend Sarah Teasdale. Sarah has worked with Zaird & Associates, CPAs, for about two years. You’ve been with Zaird for only nine months. You discussed with her your difficulties in getting jobs done in the budgeted number of hours. Sarah said, “Yeah, that’s a problem. You’ll get quicker with experience, but—don’t tell anyone I told you this—some of those audit programs are pretty awful and include some pretty outdated and even some stupid procedures.” Sometimes I just sign the program, but skip doing the procedure. “I don’t do this often, but sometimes the procedure isn’t capable of detecting anything.” You said little to her after this, but are now thinking about whether you need to become more “practical” about how you perform your work.

a. Identify your problem here.

b. Identify your possible courses of action. For each of these courses identify any constraints relating to the decision (e.g., personal standards, societal norms, professional ethical standards, other professional standards), and analyze the course of action’s likely effects.

c. Select the best course of action.