3 Quotes by Chuck Landes

We aren't looking at why one guy got $200,000 and another guy got $300,000. We want to understand how audit partners are compensated, what the incentive is that drives their behavior, and whether they are being given incentives on the quality of the work they do, rather than just on, for example, the amount of new business they bring in. We want to figure out how to build this into a standard where compensation becomes an important factor in motivating audit partners to do the right thing.

Implementation of the new standards may require auditors to change their approach and perhaps the nature of the audit procedures performed. We believe that these standards, with support from the AICPA, will allow our members to find ways to improve the effectiveness of their audit engagements.

If you look back at lessons learned over the last several years, there are arguments that could be made that there were situations where quality may have suffered because the engagement partner was compensated for the wrong things - not necessarily for the quality of their work, but because of new business they brought in, how happy they kept the client, and so on.