Analyze the legal liabilities associated with the accounting profession to determine what you would do in a specific situation related to an attestation engagement. In this attestation engagement, you are a seasoned senior auditor with 10 years' experience auditing retail public companies, and non-profit charitable organizations. You also obtained your CPA license, and your CIA credential.
There is a critical need for an auditor to assist in a complex case involving excess capacity swaps in the telecommunications industry. The primary auditor with experience in telecommunications is out on extended sick leave for 90 days.
Your manager explains that you should look for evidence of financial statement fraud during your audit because of the complexity in offshore questionable journal entries involving over 100 Special Purpose Entities (SPEs). The client's accounting system is antiquated and might be unreliable. You've never conducted an IT audit before, much less audited a telecommunications firm. You are initially reluctant to accept this opportunity, so you decide further research is needed before answering your boss. You tell your boss how you feel about this case, and that you'd like to think about it and will get back to her tomorrow.
Include the legal liabilities associated with this audit. Based on your analysis of the facts in this case, explain whether you are able to accept this audit.