Introduction
Even though auditors sell their services, the profession of auditing – certainly of the financial kind rather than the forensic type – is unlikely to feature in the list of top one hundred most sexy professions in the world. Not because auditors themselves are not attractive or because they live boring lives. I am sure that a thorough research into the profession over the past seventy years will uncover a few auditors who have been involved in interesting activities, vocations and affairs of a non-financial nature. But the first problem is that a researcher is more likely to be attracted to a thesis on the why babies cry than on the life and times of an auditor. The second is that auditors seem to reserve their shenanigans to financial affairs that in extreme circumstances can result in the break-up of more than a domestic family. This was the case with Arthur Andersen LLP, up to 2001 one of the ‘Big Five’ but which in 2002 voluntarily surrendered its licences to practise as
