2024 BDO Audit Quality Report Update

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Our commitment to enhancing audit quality is steadfast, and we expect continued improvements as we execute and deliver on our strategic goals. Dynamic market conditions, technological advancements, and an informed understanding of risk underscore our thinking as we focus on a proactive approach to delivering high-quality audits.

Enabling Quality Through a Holistic Approach

Our current update to our prior-year audit quality report provides specific examples of actions and metrics within key focus areas that are driving meaningful change in our assurance practice. 

People, Culture, and Values

Our key areas of focus include: 

  • High-performance teams: Encourage in person engagement team collaboration and problem-solving; prioritize clear, timely communication and feedback; provide tailored coaching and mentoring; and identify areas to increase the impact and contributions of individuals.
  • Career development: Realigned performance evaluations, advancement, and compensation with updated job-specific skills and core competencies to drive specific actions and expected behaviors that consistently result in high-quality audits.
  • Beneficial ownership: Embrace an ownership mindset for all of our professionals via BDO's ESOP and in particular, cultivate a deeper adoption of BDO’s core values and recognition that the success of our firm, and each individual’s share in that success, fully depends on our professionals’ commitment to placing quality at the center of everything we do. This has become a distinguishing factor in how we attract, incentivize, and retain top talent.

Innovation and Growth Through Technology, Learning, and Enablement 

Our key areas of focus include:

Expand BDOADVANTAGE — our suite of digital audit technology solutions; leverage emerging technology throughout our audit including significant investment in AI tools and resources.

$1 billions dollars invested globally in AI

Reimagined curricula to meet the evolving regulatory, technology and business landscape; and a renewed commitment to in-person and agile learning platforms.

Provide a phased audit and disciplined project management approach for prompt and thorough risk response and alleviate stress within the audit; and provide access to enhanced standardized processes, tools, templates, and a global audit methodology to further a consistent, uniform audit experience.

Quality at the Center of Everything We Do

Continually enhance all elements of our system of quality management (SoQM). Our key areas of focus include:

  • Enhancing our objective quality management program to improve action effectiveness, including preissuance reviews and evaluations of corrective actions for continuous improvement.
  • Leveraging insights from our internal and external inspection programs to improve our audit planning and execution processes and better allocate resources to meet audit quality objectives.
  • Performing annual evaluations of our SoQM and identifying any additional areas where further improvements may be needed.

Looking Forward

We are focused on enhancing and maintaining a high functioning system of quality management (SoQM) that encompasses the following:

Governance and leadership responsibilities

In support of trust and confidence in the U.S. capital markets and investor reliance on high-quality audits, our approach to audit quality is intentional and data driven, committing us to:

Fostering a culture of continuous learning, accountability, and innovation, supported by seamless integration of technology and analyses, along with in-depth understanding of and compliance with professional standards.

Utilizing a consistent audit approach, delivered by experienced professionals who exercise objective judgment and skepticism while maintaining an independent perspective.

Empowering our engagement teams through a collaboration model tailored to developing high- performance teams as well as enhancements to the resources and tools that enable our work.

Maintaining effective, real-time monitoring processes that perpetually foster timely and continuous improvement.

Prioritizing working with clients who share our values and who value our approach to audit quality.

Remaining cognizant of the changing environment in which we conduct our audits and continually enhancing our approach to address the evolving needs of those who rely upon those audits.