The problem lies in the fact that SOX Compliance itself is more than a little murkey at times. One consulting firm said that our client was more than compliant with Sarbanes-Oxley and the other accounting firm had a laundry list of compliance issues. The problem is that to an extent they were both right because the Sarbanes-Oxley compliance law is so vague and general that there is no way to tell when you've done enough and apparently even the experts can't agree. This confusion over SOX compliance is what allows certain SOX consulants to exagerate the amount of work needing to be done and then later justify it using the "we thought you'd rather be safe than sorry" defense.
My IT Consulting firm has a large client that hired a team of SOX Consultants to get them SOX compliant.
Everytime they seemed to have checked off every item on the SOX Consulting team's list they were presented with a new list of items they must correct to be SOX compliant. Eventually they hired another SOX Consulting firm and had their suspicions confirmed that the first group was basically "inventing" reasons they were not SOX compliant to rack up a truly obscene number of billable hours.
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Unfortunately for right or wrong you are judged by the company you keep. It's not always fair but it is a cold hard fact of life.
The problem lies in the fact that SOX Compliance itself is more than a little murkey at times. One consulting firm said that our client was more than compliant with Sarbanes-Oxley and the other accounting firm had a laundry list of compliance issues. The problem is that to an extent they were both right because the Sarbanes-Oxley compliance law is so vague and general that there is no way to tell when you've done enough and apparently even the experts can't agree. This confusion over SOX compliance is what allows certain SOX consulants to exagerate the amount of work needing to be done and then later justify it using the "we thought you'd rather be safe than sorry" defense.
My IT Consulting firm has a large client that hired a team of SOX Consultants to get them SOX compliant. Everytime they seemed to have checked off every item on the SOX Consulting team's list they were presented with a new list of items they must correct to be SOX compliant. Eventually they hired another SOX Consulting firm and had their suspicions confirmed that the first group was basically "inventing" reasons they were not SOX compliant to rack up a truly obscene number of billable hours.