from Reg reader Rose Humphrey

Pedantry (you may wish to correct the article) from a chartered accountant:

- Auditors do *not* produce accounts for a company, they merely certify them as being a true and fair representation (or whatever the approved wording is, as it varies from country to country, as well as depending on the size and type of organisation audited) of the company's financial situation, based on the information available to them at date of certification. Since the poor buggers (I mean the people that actually do the donkeywork, not the bigwigs) are inevitably overworked, underpaid (the company being audited hires the auditors and fixes the budget, spot the conflict of interest), hated and lied to by just about everyone they speak with - IT professionals may recognise the symptoms - yes, stuff gets past them, especially as the tests are by necessity only samples.

- Accountants produce the financial reports certified by auditors. They may not be the same people, or even the same firm; this rule is generally applied by the Big whatever's-left-of-them (was 10, which shrank to 8 over my year's postgrad course). 3 now, isn't it?