Take My Liberty ACCT 622 Class

ACCT 622 is taught through Knapp's Contemporary Auditing casebook, in which each case retells a real audit that went wrong and asks what the auditors should have done. The reading in weeks one, three and five is a case, and the questions at its end become the graded case study.

The cases cover the topics the catalog lists: auditors' ethical responsibilities, their duty to detect fraud, and the failures that led Congress to create the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in 2002.

In the fraud cases, the question is always what warning signs sat in plain view and what a careful team would have done about them. Independence and ethics cases ask where the auditors' judgment gave way to client pressure.

Liability cases turn on the classic court decisions, from Ultramares and the privity rule to the Restatement approach and securities fraud claims under Section 10(b), where scienter must be shown. Each decides who can sue an auditor and on what basis.

Weeks two, four and six are critique weeks, when you read a classmate's case study and evaluate it critically rather than summarizing it. That is a skill in itself, and the critiques carry 100 points each.

Week seven turns from cases to journal articles and the audit risk analysis project, in which you act as an audit manager deciding whether a company is an acceptable client. The term ends with you judging someone else's acceptance decision.

Apart from a Monday start, Liberty's weeks here open on Saturday, and every deadline falls late on a Friday, Eastern time.

ACCT 622 alternates between writing and critiquing, so it is handled in two-week pairs. Each case study is written in its odd week and each critique in the even week that follows.

Each case study answers the Knapp questions in order, citing the relevant auditing standard, PCAOB or AICPA, and showing exactly where the auditors departed from it. Research from both the profession's magazines and peer-reviewed audit journals backs every answer.

Fraud cases are framed around the auditor's responsibility under the fraud standard, from risk factors to responses to communication. Liability cases explain who could sue the auditors under the applicable court decisions and whether the facts meet each element.

A critique here has a job: locate what your classmate got wrong or left out, prove it with a source, and propose the fix. That is what separates a critique from a summary.

Your memo walks the partner through the acceptance checklist a firm actually uses, ending in a decision. The recommendation comes in the first paragraph, as a partner would expect.

For the last post, a classmate's memo is read with a partner's skepticism. You post and submit everything yourself.

The person behind the work has led public company engagements as a manager or senior manager, and holds the CPA. Several have also worked in a firm's quality control or professional practice group.

That experience fits a course built on real audit failures, since they have seen the same pressures on real engagements. Their case answers read like a review note from a senior auditor rather than a summary of the textbook.

They have made client acceptance decisions themselves, which is exactly the judgment the audit risk analysis project asks you to show. They know which risks make a partner hesitate.

Before release, a second reviewer checks each case study against the standards it cites. The same auditor handles your whole course, so the cases, critiques and memo share a consistent voice.

The coordinator alone knows your name, and the writer sees only the course materials. If a standard is unclear, such as how the fraud standard's brainstorming session works, a short plain explanation can be sent.

Length is the first difficulty. Most case studies need three to eight double-spaced pages to answer every question well, and students who answer briefly lose points.

Sources are the second. Leaning on the casebook alone falls short; the grading expects outside research, and plenty of it.

Standards are the third, since a strong answer names the specific auditing standard the auditors breached rather than saying they were careless. Students new to the PCAOB and AICPA standards often do not know where to look.

Critiques are the fourth difficulty, because students tend to praise or summarize. A graded critique must find a weakness and support the correction with a source.

The audit risk analysis memo is the fifth, because it asks for a professional judgment, accept or decline, and many students hedge instead of recommending. Partners expect a clear answer up front.

Liability questions bring a legal layer, since who may sue an auditor depends on the state and on which theory is pleaded.

Arranging the course before it opens gives the first case study the full opening week, which it needs at three to eight pages. Cases two and three come well ahead of their Fridays.

Each critique arrives once your classmate's case study is posted, in weeks two, four and six, with time for you to read it. The audit risk analysis memo arrives before week seven ends.

The final critique arrives once a classmate's memo is posted in week eight, before the closing Friday. The three case studies and the memo carry most of the price, and the critiques are smaller lines.

Arrive partway through and the quote starts wherever the course is. A full-term order costs less per item than ordering each piece separately.