3. Прочитайте текст и напишите аннотацию с ключевыми словами текста. Helping finance leaders

Finance leaders such as the CFO (chief financial officer) or controller have complex roles. At the risk of oversimplification, their function can be broken down into material participation in routine transactions, such as internal control effectiveness, and in nonroutine transactions, such as mergers and acquisitions, as well as subprocesses (e.g., continuous internal audit programs), special projects, and conducting or updating background checks.

 Companies generally design and implement these processes and procedures with some degree of success—at the very least, no actual notice of a material weakness or other significant dysfunction is received. That lack of notice, however, may lead some finance leaders to conclude that the existing procedures are adequate, and then they defer to the business judgment of directors and executive officers without rechecking anything or challenging the conclusion that nothing is wrong. Yet this presumption that all is working well because no complaint has surfaced is faulty. All may not be what it seems, and things can still fall apart.

 Forensic accountants can be an effective, robust, and impartial counterweight to faulty presumptions. Because forensic accountants challenge operative estimates and assumptions, CFOs and controllers can use them to gain a kind of counterintelligence, reevaluating long-standing, established routines. Regularly using forensic accountants also is an economical way to prevent or detect rogue or collusive employee conduct causing hidden fraud. Foiling or finding those crimes requires a periodic fresh examination of conditions and developing new criteria to assess employee conduct risk. In some cases, CFOs and controllers may also have to think about providing court evidence covering noncompliance details, specifying “who, what, when, where, why, and how” information. Forensic accountants have the expertise to do that.

 Forensic accountants can enhance a corporation’s internal audit function and its special projects. They also can improve an organization’s gatekeeping function, providing greater assurance of high-quality review and approval procedures that are superior to unenhanced programs. And their experience with corruption and fraud can be invaluable to a company developing and maintaining integrity programs.

Because the forensic accountants’ report must be suitable for a court of law, it is subject to adversarial cross-examination about its premises, conclusion, and methodology. In court proceedings, the report is exposed to the risks of publicity, transparency, and ethics. For example, the open hearing in court against an adversarial party can generate publicity. Because the report must meet an accepted standard for providing sufficient evidence, company details are more transparent. In addition, the court’s demand for impartiality makes stringent adherence to professional ethics essential. Therefore, these conditions must guide all aspects of forensic accountants’ inquiry procedures—including their nature, timing, extent, documentation, and communication. The result is more credible, higher-quality reporting.

 That doesn’t mean that forensic accounting inquiries always result in transparent public reporting and the airing of dirty laundry. In cases where the forensic accountants are brought in for issues not involving litigation, companies can assure privacy, secrecy, and confidentiality by working with in-house and outside legal counsel to use nondisclosure agreements.