【正文】 ors and client management. Prior Debates About Auditor Independence The second half of the 20th century saw various debates in both the academic and the professional literatures about auditor independence. One argument pertaining to auditor independence developed from idealized views of professionalism that emerged historically in both the British and the American accounting professions. For example, Thomas A. Lee, in Company Auditing, 3rd ed. (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1986, page 89), suggested the following: An honest auditor will behave like someone who is independent, using independence to mean an attitude of mind which does not allow the viewpoints and conclusions of its possessor to bee reliant on or subordinate to the influence and pressures of conflicting interests. Unfortunately, this admirable expression about auditor independence does not acknowledge that an auditor’s state of mind is not determinable, and, therefore, to conclude whether an auditor is independent pursuant to Lee’s definition is impossible. P. Moizier, in “Independence” (in Current Issues in Auditing, edited by M. Sherer and S. Turley, Paul Chapman Publishing Ltd., 1991), argued for an economic rationale for auditor independence, which was summarized as follows: There is an expectation that the auditor will have performed an audit that will have reduced the chances of a successful negligence lawsuit to a level acceptable to the auditor. In the language of economics, the auditor will perform audit work until the cost of undertaking more work is equal to the benefit the audi tor derives in terms of the reduction in the risk of a successful lawsuit being possible. This then represents the minimum amount of work that the reader can expect the auditor to perform. However, all auditors are individuals with different attitudes to risk and return and so one auditor’s minimum standard of audit work will not necessarily be that of a colleague. This economic argument, while logical, would be unsustainable if certain auditors took advantage of the general presumption regarding auditor independence in order to obtain increased market share. In other words, for the economic argument to be effective, plete pliance with the principle of auditor independence would be required. In contrast to the professional and economic arguments for auditor independence, . Bartlett, in “A Heretical Challenge to the Incantations of Audit Independence” (Accounting Horizons, vol. 5, No. 1, 1991), suggested that auditing is a sort of ceremony involving incantations about independence. Bartlett argued that there have been four kinds of “incantations” regarding auditor independence: The “smoking gun.” This is the argument that only in a few documented instances has auditor independence been found to be implicated in audit failures, at least if one accepts the evidence provided by lawsuits and prosecutions of auditors for securities fraud. Most lawsuits and prosecutions of auditors have been based on assertions of inpetence or lack of due diligence in the application of auditing standards, rather than lack of independence. An inability to obtain access to detailed records of lawsuits and other evidence about audit failures, however, makes this incantation difficult to prove. “ We are doing pretty good.” Based on public opinion surveys, the public accounting profession has generally been held in high regard. Public opinion polls assessing the esteem of the profession often address issues like objectivity, reliability, and honesty, rather than independence perse. While objectivity, reliability, honesty, and independence may overlap, what “independence” actually means to the general public is unclear. Often, the public is not well informed about what auditors do. The “public good.” This incantation suggests that if too many constraints are placed on the public accounting profession’s scope of services, accounting firms will be unable to serve clients properly, thereby imposing significant costs on the public. Some public accounting firms have argued that providing nonauditing services allows them to perform better audits because they can obtain a better understanding of the client’s systems. “ Trust us.” Independence is often said to be a mental state possessed by professional accountants and therefore not subject to empirical observation or quantification. This incantation is based