The Guardian reveals:

Prem Sikka, a professor of accounting at Essex University and a leading critic of the accounting profession, warned that without deep-rooted reform the crisis could repeat itself. "The report into the collapse of Lehmans is indicative of a deeper malaise," he said

A single case of bad auditing does not reveal anything about the state of auditing globally. You'd have to undertake a much wider study of audits to be able to deduce anything like that.

What Sikka is doing is hand-picking the cases he wants and ignoring the many millions of high quality audits that take place year in, year out. It's selection bias of the worst sort.

And it's far from obvious that his 'solution' - state-directed auditing would be any better.

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Filed under: Auditing, Current issues with tags fail, guardian, idiots, lehman, prem sikka, selection bias