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Abstract The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), through Accounting Series Releases, has expressed serious concern over the possible conflict of interests which may occur when certified public accounting firms perform nonaudit services for their audit clients. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of an investigation bearing directly upon the issue of CPA firm performance of non-audit services for their audit clients. In the following section of this paper the author briefly review the positions of both the public accounting profession and the SEC as they relate to audit independence and the performance of non-audit services. In subsequent sections we describe and report the results of a study of user perceptions regarding audit independence under certain conditions in which non-audit services have been performed. In response to the SEC and the surveys, the public accounting profession has taken several actions. The profession has limited the types of non-audit services which CPAs may perform. Firms that are members of the SEC Practice Section now are proscribed from performing the following non-audit services for SEC audit clients.
Pany et al. (Thu,) studied this question.