As the news surrounding COVID-19 changes daily, CPA firms are monitoring developments and taking necessary precautions to ensure the safety of staff members and clients. Those efforts include varied types of communication procedures including teleconferencing, skype, zoom, e-mail, internal web-sites and other methods. Many of these methods require resilient leadership who can envision issues timely or pro-actively in order to adequately address concerns.
With the pace of the pandemic and the timing with which it has rolled out, firms have found themselves in the predicament of abiding by their clients “work-from-home” edicts. This can inflict greater difficulty in obtaining information needed for completing the first quarter filings. As such, it is critical that firms establish a solid process for employee and client communication.
Publication Date: April 2020
Designed For
CPA firm members, partners, directors, staff and clients who wish to understand protocols for proper communication with their auditors.
Topics Covered
- Challenges being experienced in the CPA consulting industry
- Evaluate methods to enable timely and effective communication with clients while working to meet their needs on a timely basis
- Communication needs to ensure employees understand methods to protect themselves and clients and limit/mitigate the spread of disease at facilities
- Methods to communicate with clients in the event any event or action would negatively impact performance of services
- How to ensure clients that your firm has established effective employee protocols for public health events and working with clients
Learning Objectives
- Identify the need to properly communicate firm contingency plans, including pandemic preparedness to all internal firm employees who have a role in implementation and execution
- Identify requirements for investing in adequate communications technology to ensure employees can work virtually.
- Recognize and examine needs to leverage work relationships with other firms or offices during this time of resource constraint
- Identify client and internal IT infrastructure and evaluate risks or challenges in the event any given piece of infrastructure is off-line
- Identify need to maintain a line of sight on regulatory and SEC requirements for public company reporting during this crisis period and properly communicate requirements to clients
Level
Basic
Instructional Method
Self-Study
NASBA Field of Study
Business Management & Organization (1 hour)
Program Prerequisites
None
Advance Preparation
None
Instructor
Lynn Fountain
Lynn Fountain has over 38 years of experience spanning public accounting, corporate accounting and consulting. 20 years of her experience has been working in the areas of internal and external auditing and risk management. She is a subject matter expert in multiple fields including internal audit, ethics, fraud evaluations, Sarbanes-Oxley, enterprise risk management, governance, financial management and compliance. Lynn has held two Chief Audit Executive (CAE) positions for international companies. In one of her roles as CAE, she assisted in the investigation of a multi-million-dollar fraud scheme perpetrated by a vendor that spanned 7 years and implicated 20 employees. The fraud was formally investigation by the FBI and resulted in 5 indictments estimating a $13M fraud loss.
Ms. Fountain is currently engaged in her own consulting and training practice. She is a highly sought-after trainer and international speaker. In addition, Ms. Fountain has assisted numerous companies with enterprise risk management frameworks, internal audit processes and financial accounting. She also serves as a discussion leader for the AICPA for numerous classes finance, accounting and risk management topics.
Ms. Fountain is the author of three separate technical books. Her first book released in 2015 by the Institute of Internal Auditors Foundation is entitled “Raise the Red Flag – The Internal Auditors Guide to Fraud Evaluations”. Her second book “Leading the Internal Audit Function” was released in October 2015 by Taylor & Francis Publications. This book serves as the initial launch for a series of leading practice internal audit and information technology publications. Her third book “Ethics and the Internal Auditor’s Dilemma” was released in December 2016.
Ms. Fountain obtained her BSBA from Pittsburg State University and her MBA from Washburn University in Kansas. She has her CPA, CGMA, CRMA credentials.