Journey through a peer review – field work is today

Here’s part 6 of the tale of my journey through my peer review.

Today is field work. The reviewer will arrive at my office soon. Expect him to be here most of the day.

Spent a few minutes yesterday pulling together a few more documents I know he will want to see. Also set up an extra computer for his use while he reads a bunch of workpapers.

I won’t be talking about the results of the review for a long time.

Rules of the peer review program prohibit talking about the report until it has been accepted by the Peer Review Committee.  That mean it could be several months, up to 4 actually, until I can say how the review went.

Not talking about the report actually makes a lot of sense.

Why?  If there were some issues still open after the field work, the reviewer could change the tentative conclusion about the report after consulting with CalCPA staff.

Or the technical reviewer could ask questions of the reviewer that change the results.

Or the tech reviewer could disagree with the report.

Or the Peer Review Committee could not accept the report. That happened to me on a review I performed. A report I prepared went through technical review fine, but the committee made a specific policy decision that in a certain circumstance combined with a particular error in the financial statements, then a certain type of peer review report was required. (Hey, how’s that for really vague?)  So, I changed the report.

I won’t be doing any of the ol’ wink-and-nod routine either. None of the “I just can’t wait to announce to everybody the results of my great peer review, (wink, wink)”.

So, in a few months I’ll announce the results of the review. In the meantime I’ll have a few more posts on the process.

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