outsourcing

Is it possible for auditing work to one day be outsourced like some of the IT sector has? Or do the various exams, credit hours etc prevent that? 


We've slowly started outsourcing work already - the testing of documents clerically, the testing of journal entries for completeness and filtering the entries using certain criteria, independence work, rollforwards of prior year schedules,financial statement tie-outs, etc. I'd say about 10-15% of our work is being outsourced, and I can probably see it keep going up.

At the same time, I can never see it fully being outsourced since there is still a matter of face to face conversations with your clients to discuss accounting issues, to build relationships so as to increase the Firms' revenues, to make inquiries of key client personnel. Plus, in order for staff to go through the heirarchy and become partners, they'd probably need to understand all the procedures that an audit entails.

Are we completely immune from globalization? No, but I can't see the entire job being outsourced. Who knows, maybe the Firms will give it a shot and it will become the new normal. As of now, I like that such work is being outsourced, it frees up the staff to do focus on other areas.