Auditing

I was skeptical that another book could be different than any other on this same subject, but was I wrong - this is a "must-read" book for any financial professional, accountant, CPA and appraisal expert who conducts online research and looks for in-depth information. Lang and Tudor have outdone themselves. Bravo to a world-class effort! One piece of information in the first chapter alone more than covered the cost of the book.

Great overview of its history, and other frameworks for internal control evaluations. Clearly the author has major misgivings with COSO, and describes why the shortcomings reflect the biases of the authors, which is the public accounting firms. Excellent overview of other frameworks, and why they might be superior. With the passage of the Sarbanes Oxley Act, this understanding might seem more important, but likely many organizations will struggle just to do COSO. An important addition to any research on COSO.

Anyone who read this book when it was first published in 1998 needs to re-read it in the context of the Enron revelations. It is amazing how Steven J. Root's examination and explanation of what internal control is, how it should be implemented and what it can and cannot accomplish is exactly on-point vis-à-vis the break downs in corporate governance at Enron, Global Crossing and others of their ilk. Anyone from business student to congressional overseer, who wants the proper framework for understanding and explaining these crises should carefully study this book.

Beyond COSO is probably one of the best, complete and most recent books on (internal) control. What interested me a great deal was that Root behind the masks of the committee of sponsoring organisations looks, metaphorically speaking. It helped me a great deal on writing a graduation paper on this topic.