For a CPA firm, the performance of high-quality professional services is essential to ensuring the firm’s success, profitability, and longevity. A firm’s system of quality control is the bedrock upon which its accounting and auditing practice is based. An effective control system very often reflects a firm’s commitment to quality at all levels, which results in high-quality services.

The AICPA Principles of Professional Conduct requires quality control procedures to “ensure that services are competently delivered and adequately supervised.” Statements of Quality Control Standards are standards issued by the AICPA Auditing Standards Board to provide the framework for developing and maintaining an effective system of quality control. Firms that have accounting and auditing practices are required to follow the quality control (QC) standards.

The purpose of a quality control system is to promote quality in performing accounting and auditing engagements. The QC standard indicates that a firm’s system of quality control is a system designed to provide the firm with reasonable assurance that: (a) the firm and its personnel are complying with professional standards and applicable legal and regulatory requirements and (b) reports issued by the firm are appropriate in the circumstances.

As an AICPA member, our firm is required by the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct to have a system of quality control. As part of the system of quality control, we are required to have a peer review performed every three years. An independent review (peer review) of our firm is conducted by a qualified CPA firm who has knowledge of credit unions. Since 1979, our firm has met the standards with a pass rating.