8 ms·

EY to pay $100 mln to settle U.S. charges of staff cheating on accountant exams

71 points by ptsneves 4y ago

dmos62 4y ago
How are these exams performed? It's a red flag to me that it's even possible to pass exam answers around. Do the examinees surveil themselves?
- m348e912 4y ago
  They may have done what many US university fraternity organizations do. Procure a copy of test questions. With frats it's usually test questions from previous year provided by upperclassmen who have already completed the course. Many times the test questions don't change significantly year over year.
  - user_named 4y ago
    At my European top university, a database of previous exams was available for every single course, provided by the university itself.
- eatsyourtacos 4y ago
  I can't say to now, but back around 17 years ago when I took them, they moved to 100% on the computer. You would go into one of those testing facilities, and be on the machine and be answering questions. I'm pretty sure the questions were even fairly randomized- in the sense that the person sitting next to you would not have all the same questions etc. Which is why the results of pass/fail were not immediate, they would aggregate everyone's scores and probably do stuff for questions that were similar etc. I may be wrong on the randomized part, but I don't recall being able to discuss any specific questions with classmates afterwards.. Anyway- perhaps things have changed from 2005 but I don't really understand how one is able to cheat on the CPA with specific questions like they are talking about.. unless it would be taking pictures/video of their test and showing that to others.. although honestly I don't even see how that would help- when I took the exams the questions are 100% what you would have expected to be asked. It's just like a practice test book, you just don't know exactly what they are going to ask.
xeromal 4y ago
This isn't a very serious comment, but it drives me bonkers how many monikers there are for a million. Now I have to prep my brain for the mln floating around. lol
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Then in French they say “milliard” for billion. And billiard for trillion. Throws me off.
  - cjbgkagh 4y ago
    I think the old style British Billion is a million million as well, so the meaning depends on how old the text is.
  - krisoft 4y ago
    Wait until you learn that the French has a different word for many other concepts too! Crazy! Why can't they just use plain English nobody knows. \s
    - 908B64B197 4y ago
      > Wait until you learn that the French has a different word for many other concepts too! But it gets more interesting, they use the same words (or a very similar one) as in English to express different concepts. "Crier" sounds like cry, but it means "to scream".
      - sofixa 4y ago
        Even worse, there are "English sounding words" that mean things in French that don't exist and wouldn't make sense in English. E.g pressing is a dry cleaner, dressing is a wardrobe, footing is jogging.
      - baggy_trough 4y ago
        Like 'cry out'.
Drunk_Engineer 4y ago
Cheated on an ethics exam.
jackalo 4y ago
As someone who has had taxes done by EY, I'm not the least bit surprised.
- mtmail 4y ago
  They did my personal taxes one year, part of a larger corporate benefits deal. I was late and claimed I lost access to their online filing tool (stupid excuse). Instead of giving me a new account or password reset after 5 minutes the associate brought me a piece of paper ... with my password on it. Same I used for my emails, definitely one I set in the past. They stored it in plain text with plenty of people having access. I was shocked.
cs702 4y ago
Surely, everyone involved has "good intentions." And yet, looking at this in hindsight, it reads like something straight out of Kafka's cynical mind: 1. An accounting company's staff systematically cheats on an exam for accountants. 2. The company gets caught and charged by the government. 3. The company pays a fine to settle the charges, with a bit of fanfare. 4. The company is now assumed to have changed its behavior. 5. The company suffers no other consequences.
- throw10920 4y ago
  If you replace "company" with "individual", then the entire thing makes sense - individuals (and therefore companies) should be assumed to have changed until further evidence proves otherwise (innocent until proven guilty and all that). That's why the concept of "repeat offenders" exists, and they do tend to be punished more harshly, at least in the case of individuals. So, time for an extension of that concept to corporations, as well?
  - transportgo 4y ago
    Corporations are people too.
  - thfuran 4y ago
    >individuals (and therefore companies) Alright, you've lost me. Why should corporations always be treated the same as individuals?
    - voakbasda 4y ago
      In the US, the courts have declared corporations are people for all intents and purposes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood?wprov=sft...
      - pie420 4y ago
        that doesn't answer his question on why it should be that way. Courts have said many things over the years, doesn't make it any less of an appeal to authority logical fallacy.
datavirtue 4y ago
Reminds me of the certification boot camps where you sit in rapid lectures all day and then go to your room to study all the Chinese brain dumps at night. In the morning you come back and take the test in the next room over.
- markoman 4y ago
  What is the pass rate? I assume it's pretty high?
vangelis 4y ago
I have never seen million abbreviated as "mln" instead of "mil"... So at first I read this headline as "100 dollars minimum".
- kgermino 4y ago
  Same here. I'm used to 'MM' in this context, but 'mil' is common and clear too. 'mln' took a couple reads to understand
908B64B197 4y ago
- dpierce9 4y ago
  Yes a trend that goes back to at least Socrates. This guy was, famously, unethically canceled by the law.
- atwood22 4y ago
  > The Wall Street watchdog found that 49 EY professionals "obtained or circulated" answer keys to CPA license exams, while hundreds of others cheated to complete the continuing professional education components relating to CPA ethics. So at least 49 employees shared the answer key to the CPA license exams. That's more than just an ethics exam.
riskneutral 4y ago
The exact same thing (auditors cheating on ethics exams) happened at KPMG a few years ago [1]. In KPMG's case, I recall that the ethics exams had been mandated by a regulator after ethics violations had been found at the firm. The most concerning thing about this is that public auditing firms are supposed to be the entities keeping everyone else honest. The whole financial system is based on a chain of trust that starts and ends with auditors. If you can't trust the external auditors, then you can't fully trust anything. This is the world we live in. [1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-kpmg-cheating-scandal-was-much-more-widespread-than-originally-thought-2019-06-18 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-kpmg-cheating-scandal-...
- ptsneves 4y ago
  > The whole financial system is based on a chain of trust that starts and ends with auditors. I guess this would be the equivalent of certificate authorities being caught issuing non-unique or wildcard certificates.

71 points by ptsneves 4y ago

How are these exams performed? It's a red flag to me that it's even possible to pass exam answers around. Do the examinees surveil themselves?

m348e912 4y ago
They may have done what many US university fraternity organizations do. Procure a copy of test questions. With frats it's usually test questions from previous year provided by upperclassmen who have already completed the course. Many times the test questions don't change significantly year over year.
- user_named 4y ago
  At my European top university, a database of previous exams was available for every single course, provided by the university itself.
eatsyourtacos 4y ago
I can't say to now, but back around 17 years ago when I took them, they moved to 100% on the computer. You would go into one of those testing facilities, and be on the machine and be answering questions. I'm pretty sure the questions were even fairly randomized- in the sense that the person sitting next to you would not have all the same questions etc. Which is why the results of pass/fail were not immediate, they would aggregate everyone's scores and probably do stuff for questions that were similar etc. I may be wrong on the randomized part, but I don't recall being able to discuss any specific questions with classmates afterwards.. Anyway- perhaps things have changed from 2005 but I don't really understand how one is able to cheat on the CPA with specific questions like they are talking about.. unless it would be taking pictures/video of their test and showing that to others.. although honestly I don't even see how that would help- when I took the exams the questions are 100% what you would have expected to be asked. It's just like a practice test book, you just don't know exactly what they are going to ask.

xeromal 4y ago

This isn't a very serious comment, but it drives me bonkers how many monikers there are for a million. Now I have to prep my brain for the mln floating around. lol

Scoundreller 4y ago
Then in French they say “milliard” for billion. And billiard for trillion. Throws me off.
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  I think the old style British Billion is a million million as well, so the meaning depends on how old the text is.
- krisoft 4y ago
  Wait until you learn that the French has a different word for many other concepts too! Crazy! Why can't they just use plain English nobody knows. \s
  - 908B64B197 4y ago
    > Wait until you learn that the French has a different word for many other concepts too! But it gets more interesting, they use the same words (or a very similar one) as in English to express different concepts. "Crier" sounds like cry, but it means "to scream".
    - sofixa 4y ago
      Even worse, there are "English sounding words" that mean things in French that don't exist and wouldn't make sense in English. E.g pressing is a dry cleaner, dressing is a wardrobe, footing is jogging.
    - baggy_trough 4y ago
      Like 'cry out'.

Drunk_Engineer 4y ago

Cheated on an ethics exam.

jackalo 4y ago

As someone who has had taxes done by EY, I'm not the least bit surprised.

mtmail 4y ago
They did my personal taxes one year, part of a larger corporate benefits deal. I was late and claimed I lost access to their online filing tool (stupid excuse). Instead of giving me a new account or password reset after 5 minutes the associate brought me a piece of paper ... with my password on it. Same I used for my emails, definitely one I set in the past. They stored it in plain text with plenty of people having access. I was shocked.

cs702 4y ago

Surely, everyone involved has "good intentions." And yet, looking at this in hindsight, it reads like something straight out of Kafka's cynical mind: 1. An accounting company's staff systematically cheats on an exam for accountants. 2. The company gets caught and charged by the government. 3. The company pays a fine to settle the charges, with a bit of fanfare. 4. The company is now assumed to have changed its behavior. 5. The company suffers no other consequences.

throw10920 4y ago
If you replace "company" with "individual", then the entire thing makes sense - individuals (and therefore companies) should be assumed to have changed until further evidence proves otherwise (innocent until proven guilty and all that). That's why the concept of "repeat offenders" exists, and they do tend to be punished more harshly, at least in the case of individuals. So, time for an extension of that concept to corporations, as well?
- transportgo 4y ago
  Corporations are people too.
- thfuran 4y ago
  >individuals (and therefore companies) Alright, you've lost me. Why should corporations always be treated the same as individuals?
  - voakbasda 4y ago
    In the US, the courts have declared corporations are people for all intents and purposes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood?wprov=sft...
    - pie420 4y ago
      that doesn't answer his question on why it should be that way. Courts have said many things over the years, doesn't make it any less of an appeal to authority logical fallacy.

datavirtue 4y ago

Reminds me of the certification boot camps where you sit in rapid lectures all day and then go to your room to study all the Chinese brain dumps at night. In the morning you come back and take the test in the next room over.

markoman 4y ago
What is the pass rate? I assume it's pretty high?

vangelis 4y ago

I have never seen million abbreviated as "mln" instead of "mil"... So at first I read this headline as "100 dollars minimum".

kgermino 4y ago
Same here. I'm used to 'MM' in this context, but 'mil' is common and clear too. 'mln' took a couple reads to understand

908B64B197 4y ago

dpierce9 4y ago
Yes a trend that goes back to at least Socrates. This guy was, famously, unethically canceled by the law.
atwood22 4y ago
> The Wall Street watchdog found that 49 EY professionals "obtained or circulated" answer keys to CPA license exams, while hundreds of others cheated to complete the continuing professional education components relating to CPA ethics. So at least 49 employees shared the answer key to the CPA license exams. That's more than just an ethics exam.

riskneutral 4y ago

The exact same thing (auditors cheating on ethics exams) happened at KPMG a few years ago [1]. In KPMG's case, I recall that the ethics exams had been mandated by a regulator after ethics violations had been found at the firm. The most concerning thing about this is that public auditing firms are supposed to be the entities keeping everyone else honest. The whole financial system is based on a chain of trust that starts and ends with auditors. If you can't trust the external auditors, then you can't fully trust anything. This is the world we live in. [1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-kpmg-cheating-scandal-was-much-more-widespread-than-originally-thought-2019-06-18 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-kpmg-cheating-scandal-...

ptsneves 4y ago
> The whole financial system is based on a chain of trust that starts and ends with auditors. I guess this would be the equivalent of certificate authorities being caught issuing non-unique or wildcard certificates.