Question: General Attributes Sampling. You overheard the following dialogue between Joe Ashley (a staff assistant) and Monique Estrada (his supervisor).
Required: Referring to appropriate professional standards, comment on each of these statements.
a. "It's unfortunate that generally accepted auditing standards don't allow us to use non statistical sampling for this control. I just don't feel that the extra time and effort to use statistical sampling are worth the benefits."
b. "I'm not sure what level of control risk we should plan to use. We need to determine the amount of substantive procedures that we will conduct and then assess control risk accordingly."
c. "We really need to be careful to limit our exposure to the risk of overreliance. This risk could result in our failure to perform enough substantive procedures."
d. "Separation of duties is such an important control that we should use statistical sampling to evaluate the extent to which the custody, recording, and approval functions for purchases are performed by different individuals."
e. "Because we're really relying heavily on this control, it's important that it be operating very effectively. That's why I set the tolerable rate of deviation at such a low level."