The Recommendation, however, was far from the firms' desired outcome because, as a non-binding policy document, it left it to individual Member States to decide whether (or not) and how to limit auditors' liability exposure.
Mr. Sullivan was criticized for his reassurances to investors about A.I.G.'s health in December despite warnings from company auditors that its exposure to those contracts was growing.
This group addressed the potential for reverse causation bias, in which the outcome could cause the exposure since auditors typically move to locations where more activities are taking place.
Federal prosecutors have been investigating whether AIG misled investors and its own auditors – PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) – about its potential exposure to the sub-prime mortgage crisis, which was kicked off by the collapse of the US investment bank Bear Stearns in 2007.
Internal auditors for both banks expressed concern at the exposure to risk of mismanagement and fraud by Traynor's operation of the Ansbacher deposits.
"BNP took provisions against its Greece exposure in full agreement with its auditors and the relevant authorities, in accordance with the plan decided upon by the European Union on July 21," a bank spokeswoman said.
As he did, the auditors worked to pinpoint and assess the bank's exposure.
The Hawthorne effect was conceptualised as an exposure outcome relationship, in which the exposure was the presence of a hand hygiene auditor and the outcome was hand hygiene events.
Drawing on Hilgartner's concept of a 'risk object', the paper reveals how a search for a policy consensus on auditor liability was invariably frustrated by the competing conceptualizations of, and exposure to, risk attributed to particular proposed liability arrangements.
Toxic chemical exposures are so loosely regulated that the Government Accountability Office, the top-flight auditor of the federal government, has placed EPA's regulatory efforts on its select list of "high risk" programs that are vulnerable to mismanagement and ineffectiveness.
