In the wake of the auditing scandals that unfolded in 2001 and 2002, the formal opinions expressed by auditors relative to the veracity of the financial statements of the companies audited have come under increased scrutiny. Most people recognize that an auditor's unqualified opinion does not constitute an iron-clad guarantee that a set of audited financial statements is free of inaccuracies because: (a) the internal cost to a company to implement the procedures necessary to even attempt to attain such a goal would be prohibitively expensive and
(b) the cost of an audit to verify such a state would be equally prohibitively expensive.
The issue then involves the steps that auditors can take to structure opinions that:
(a) recognize that some inaccuracies likely are present in a set of audited financial statements, while simultaneously
(b) providing assurance to the people of who rely on such statements that al reasonable efforts have been made to minimize the impact of any inaccur
10 
)
= 671
= 3 (250 words per page)
