CEOs and other business leaders in this National Post/COMPAS study of business executives have great confidence in the ethics of their own auditors while having slightly higher than middling confidence in the ethics of auditing firms that do the books of publicly traded companies in which they may be investors.

Extensive media coverage of the Enron collapse does not appear to be a factor in respondents’ views of the profession. Executives in Canada are not following the U.S. energy company’s imbroglio very closely, and no statistical relationship emerges between the degree of attentiveness to the Enron affair and how respondents feel about accountants.

Most CEOs and other business leaders in this study say that they would steer clear of any accounting firm involved in a serious ethical dilemma. But, when respondents’ views on a range of relevant aspects are considered, it is by no means clear that all or even many executives would steer clear of an accounting firm implicated in every meltdown. Executives do not hold individual accounting firms fully responsible for such meltdowns. Furthermore, they feel more intensely about a need for accounting reform than about individual firms that may be associated with a particular imbroglio. By immense margins, respondents want the independence of auditors protected by barring accounting firms from providing auditing and consulting to the same client. By immense margins, respondents also want laws changed to prohibit putting corporate liabilities off the balance sheet and to make it easier to hold officers, directors, and accountants financially and criminally liable for their conduct.

While they want tougher rules and laws, CEOs and other business leaders nonetheless do not want more government. The policy option of creating a government agency to supervise accounting firms is roundly rejected.

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