The study is on Arthur Andersen, one of the former Big Five accounting firms.
Step One: Analyze the Company’s History
The company’s past may have greatly affected the state of the organization. To begin your case study analysis, investigate the company’s founding, red-flags, financial critical incidents, structure, and growth. Create a timeline of events and issues. This timeline will come in handy for the next step in your case analysis. What in history could have led to the company’s fall?
Step Two: Identify Weaknesses within the Company
Using the information, you gathered in step one, continue your case study analysis by examining and making a list fraudulent crimes that occurred in the company. For example, the company may have been weak in a particular area, but strong in another which led to non-detection. Make a list of problems that have occurred and note the effects they had on the company and its stakeholders.
Step Three: Gather Information on the Environment
The third step involves identifying threats within the company’s internal and external environment. What about the environment led to fraud and later detection?
Step Four: Analyze Findings
Using the information in steps two and three, you will need to create an analysis for this portion of your case study. Compare the weaknesses within the company to exposure, threats, and opportunities for fraud which took place.
Step Five: Analyze Systems and Evidence Found
This step requires that you to identify and analyze the structure and control systems that the fraudsters used to cover their tracks. Evaluate organizational change, levels of hierarchy, employees involved, conflicts, and other human factor issues deemed important. Look at the evidence in detail and discuss it.
Step Six: Forensic Recommendations and Outcomes
The final part of your case study analysis should include your recommendations as a fraud examiner. Be sure to address issues of remediation that occurred. Every recommendation you make should be based on your own knowledge and supported by outside sources.
Never make a baseless recommendation. You want to make sure that your suggested solutions are actually realistic. What in this case could have been avoided? How could the corporate accounting fraud case have been circumvented or stopped earlier? Analyze this case as if you were working it yourself.
