ACG 6658 Florida Atlantic University WorldCom Case Discussion What is the bigger picture of the WorldCom case.WorldCom lacked Internal Controls over their

ACG 6658 Florida Atlantic University WorldCom Case Discussion What is the bigger picture of the WorldCom case.WorldCom lacked Internal Controls over their financial reporting. The fact that the CFO could post and approve its journal entries is a clear abuse of management override. It also shows that staff were simply a staff of following the bosses instructions without questioning in the case of Betty Vinson who made the entries without any supporting documentations. Do you think there is any link, other than coincidence and bad luck that both the Enron and WorldCom audit failures were Arthur Andersen clients?It could have been pure coincidence but I do believe that Anderson was blindsided by its greed since both Companies were big companies in their industries. Anderson allowed its “greed” in wanting to keep these big clients screw its professional judgement and relied on analytical procedures. Had they done more audit work such as substantive testing they would have picked up on a lot of discrepancies. Whilst both situations were different it speaks to the character of Anderson and Arthur Anderson should be one of the reasons as professional accountants that we excuse due care and professional skepticism.