On July 25, 2023, the Chair of the PCAOB put out a statement making suggestions as to questions that an audit committee should ask its auditor in connection with its financial statement review process. The recommendations were made in light of the significant number of auditor deficiencies that the PCAOB was seeing.

Among the recommended questions are the following:

• Has our audit engagement been inspected by the PCAOB? Were there any audit areas that required significant discussions with the PCAOB that did not result in a comment?
• Has the engagement partner been inspected on other engagements? If so, what were the results of that inspection?
• What is the audit firm doing to address overall increased inspection findings?

Given the significant number of deficiencies that the PCAOB is seeing, audit committees should consider it a best practice to ask these questions of their auditor in connection with their next quarterly filing. In preparation for these communications with their auditor, audit committees can find information about their auditor by searching https://pcaobus.org for their auditor.