Business Week (January 28, 2002, pp. 31-32): Can You Trust Anybody Anymore? "...Serious damage has been done to ethical codes of conduct by once-trusted business professionals...In a free-market company, companies are supposed to fail because of the business cycle or bad business decisions. Failure from loose and sleazy practices, if not outright fraud, is another matter....In short, most certified public accountants feel little duty to the public at large."
USA Today (February 22, 2002, p. 2A): "A recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll shows that less than one-third of people rate accountants high for honesty and integrity, down from two fifths last year."
New York Times (July, 2002): Two law professors, David Skeel and William Stuntz, in "Another Attempt to Legislate Corporate Honesty" stated "We've turned what used to be moral questions into legal technicalities. In today's world, executives are more likely to ask what they can get away with legally than to worry about what's fair and honest."
Wall Street Journal (February 7, 2003, p. 1): Accounting Firms Face Backlash... Clients are suing accountants in a sour aftermath to the profession's push in the 1990's for new work that paid better than auditing work... "The pressure became to sell things that would be in your best interest rather than the clients'" says Robert Verzi, a former partner at Deloitte & Touche LLP in Atlanta.
SPL History (Madison, WI): Surviving Wegner LLP, CPA & Associates.