Quality and regularity
Becoming a correspondent member of the international association of accounting firms Moores Rowland International (MRI) in 1995 provided the Rimess team with a lot of support. It was now easy to obtain an overview of how auditing and accounting work was done in the rest of the world, as well as the opportunity to learn about International Financial Reporting Standards. In short, auditing standards serve two purposes: they are a working guide for the auditor and a means of measuring the quality of the work done.
Highly regarded trainer Ian Charles started regularly educating the Baltic and Nordic companies of MRI about these standards in 1997. Auditor Maire Otsus-Carpenter still remembers these week-long courses because, in addition to his expertise, Charles was also an excellent speaker. Otsus-Carpenter explains: “His training events were like shows. We loved them!” Ian Charles trains the employees of Grant Thornton Baltic to this day.
Mati Nõmmiste and Eva Veinberg at the party following the IFRS and auditing standards training in the MRI Northern Region in November 1997 at the Open Air Museum.
The development of auditing methodology in a more systematic way began in Rimess in 1999 when Artur Suits spent a month in England to study the subject in more detail. “Back then, we didn’t have proper methodological training on how exactly to conduct an audit and document our work,” he recalls. Janno Greenbaum, who is a member of the methodology committee of the Estonian Auditors Association, developed the audit methodology, monitored its implementation and has been training his colleagues for many years.
Both internal and external quality control are an integral part of the work of auditors as well. After all, one of the biggest risks of an audit is that it may be a case of an auditor issuing an unqualified opinion when in fact there were errors in the financial statements that were not identified. At Grant Thornton Baltic, internal quality control rests on the shoulders of audit managers, who review the work of their colleagues at the end of the season.
However, you can never be too thorough when it comes to external quality control: in addition to the Estonian Auditors Association, which regularly monitors the quality of Estonian audit firms, Grant Thornton also monitors the quality of its member firms. Both the Auditors Association and Grant Thornton can be pleased with the latest audit results.
