After issuing an amendment to the 1994 Revision of the “Government Auditing Standards", (Amendment No. 3, Independence), the GAO received many inquiries about the new independence standard due to its significant effect on auditors in connection with audits of federal entities and funds and on those who have adopted or are otherwise required to use GAGAS.

To address these questions, the GAO issued the “Government Auditing Standards Answers to Independence Standard Questions” in July 2002. As Amendment No. 3 is fully integrated into the 2003 Revision of the Government Auditing Standards, the “Government Auditing Standards Answers to Independence Standard Questions” is still useful guidance issued by the GAO regarding the independence standard.

The document is designed to answer questions in the following areas:
• Questions Relating to Independence Standard Implementation and Transition,
• Questions Concerning Certain Independence Standard Underlying Concepts, and
• Questions about Applying the Independence Standard in Specific Nonaudit Circumstances.

This course reviews some of the questions and answers from this important document. The full document is available on the GAO web site at http://www.gao.gov.
The next two courses in the series, part 2 and part 3 are a continuation of this course. Each segment is a 50 minute portion that is worth one CPE credit.