PwC has been fined $900,000 by US and Canadian watchdogs over the exam cheating of 1,100 of its auditors.
The regulator said the Big 4 firm had failed to stop its staff were sharing their exam answers between 2016 and 2020. Short comings in internal controls and test supervision led to widescale cheating in auditing, accounting and professional independence testing.
The firm discovered the misconduct in January 2020 and reported the matter to the watchdog. The cheating mostly involved junior assurance staff, who shared their answers online.
PwC said: “We have undertaken several remediation steps including retraining, additional ethics training, financial penalties, written warnings and terminations where warranted.” It also explained: “While we are confident there has been an impact or compromise to the quality of our audits as evidence by our current inspection results, we expect more from everybody in our firm.”
