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by SolarNet 4436 days ago
Independent auditor hired by the company being audited, instead of hyping her record, they should have provided evidence of it. I'm not saying the auditor wasn't independent, just that I don't trust the claim coming from the company that paid for it and is presenting the view.
3 comments
cantankerous 4436 days ago
With respectable auditors, independence is what you're paying for. Auditors that are found out not to be independent quickly go up in smoke. Just ask anybody who worked at Arthur Andersen about the Enron scandal.
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Rantenki 4435 days ago
Arthur Anderson was founded in 1913, so they were around for quite some time before they "went up in smoke". Anderson started auditing in the early 90s, and apparently was ignoring serious red flags from the very beginning. I guess auditors can get away with biased/dependent behavior for a long time.
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cantankerous 4435 days ago
And yet up in smoke they went. Here today, gone tomorrow.
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Rantenki 4434 days ago
Yes, but they lasted for a nearly a century first. While corrupt auditors will fail _eventually_, it isn't realistic to expect auditors to all be honest because they bad behavior will kill them in the long run. They can do a lot of damage in the short term before they fall apart.

It'll be interesting to see how this situation shakes out for this auditor, but I suspect they'll keep ticking along just fine.

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thwarted 4435 days ago
So then you're going to take at face value evidence provided by the party who hired the auditor? That sounds just as dubious as the claims of independence asserted by the hiring party itself!

It's entirely possible for one to look up an independent auditors credentials and history out-of-band. If you can't find anything to substantiate Github's claims of the auditor's record/independence, then call that out.

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chippy 4435 days ago
The auditor did their job. But only their job. Their job was to their client. They have no responsibility for example, to expose other illegal employment issues, or financial irregularities when they find them. Their job was not to the whole truth, but to the parts that they have been asked to investigate. They have to be discrete.
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