arbiter
JournalsPricingAccount

Ernst & Young’s $100 Million SEC Penalty:

Stephen Errol Blythe

Journal of Accounting, Business and Management2025https://doi.org/10.31966/jabminternational.v32i1.1231article
ABDC C
Weight
0.50

What the paper says

The U.S. securities and exchange commission (SEC) monitors the financial reporting practices of business firms that sell stock on U.S. exchanges. The SEC requires certified public accountants (CPAs) to audit those firms in order to provide reasonable assurance that the firms’ financial statements contain no material misstatements and that the firms have good internal accounting controls. Since CPAs serve as a watchdog for the SEC, the CPA exam content should be rigorous and the exam should be securely administered; this helps to ensure that only qualified applicants become CPAs and that audits are performed competently. Accordingly, the SEC was disappointed to learn that some of the auditors at Ernst & Young (E&Y), one of the four largest international CPA firms, had cheated on CPA ethics examinations. Furthermore, E&Y management attempted to cover up the cheating. E&Y admitted its culpability and agreed to pay a $100 million penalty and undertake remedial measures to correct the firm’s ethical issues. At the end of this study, the author: (1) emphasizes the critical importance of ethical behavior to CPAs; (2) makes recommendations for avoidance of internal exam cheating at CPA firms; and (3) makes recommendations to the SEC for improvement of its enforcement quality.

Open paper page →

Cite this paper

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.31966/jabminternational.v32i1.1231

Or copy a formatted citation

@article{stephen2025,
  title        = {{Ernst & Young’s $100 Million SEC Penalty:}},
  author       = {Stephen Errol Blythe},
  journal      = {Journal of Accounting, Business and Management},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.31966/jabminternational.v32i1.1231},
}

Paste directly into BibTeX, Zotero, or your reference manager.

Flag this paper

Ernst & Young’s $100 Million SEC Penalty:

Flags are reviewed by the Arbiter methodology team within 5 business days.

Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.