Taking on work outside the firm's experience
What competence and due care ask of a firm before it accepts unfamiliar work, and how acceptance, specialists and a quality reviewer are recorded.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
A long-standing client buys a farm and wants its first statements with biological assets in them. A school asks for an audit of a donor-funded project that reports in the donor's own format. A prospect in mining asks for a quote. None of this is exotic, but each sits outside what the firm has done before, and the easy reply ("we'll work it out as we go") is the one that gets firms into trouble.
The IESBA Code and the quality management standards give the decision a clear shape. This article walks through it and shows where Achekam keeps the record of each step.
Competence and due care as a principle
The IESBA Code's five fundamental principles are integrity, objectivity, professional competence and due care, confidentiality, and professional behaviour. Competence and due care is the one at stake here. Accepting work the firm cannot do properly is not only a commercial risk; it is an ethical one.
The principle is practical rather than absolute. It does not demand that the firm has done every kind of engagement before. It demands that, by the time the work is done, the people doing and reviewing it have the knowledge it needs and apply it with care.
The acceptance question under ISQM 1
ACCA explains that under ISQM 1 firms must assess the integrity and ethical values of a client and its management, and their own ability to perform the engagement within legal and professional requirements. ACCA adds that financial and operational priorities must not lead to inappropriate acceptance or continuance decisions, and that existing relationships should be reassessed each year before reappointment.
"Their own ability" is the phrase to test honestly. Before saying yes, ask:
- Has anyone in the firm prepared or audited this kind of entity or transaction before?
- Which standards or rules apply that the team has not used recently, such as IAS 41 for the farm or a donor's reporting framework for the school?
- Can the knowledge be obtained in time, through training, a specialist, or a reviewer who already has it?
- Is the fee, or the wish to keep a valued client happy, pushing towards "yes" before those answers are known?
ISQM 1 is most concerned with the last question.
Experts, training and supervision
Where the knowledge gap can be closed, the means are familiar: focused training before fieldwork, an external expert for a specialist area such as a valuation, and closer supervision by someone who knows the field.
ACCA explains that ISA 220 (Revised) makes the audit engagement partner responsible for ensuring that sufficient and appropriate resources are available to the engagement team in a timely manner, in line with the firm's policies. ACCA adds that the partner is also responsible for the competence of the team and of any external expert used. A partner who accepts unfamiliar work therefore also accepts personal responsibility for assembling a team that can do it. More on working with specialists is in using an expert on the engagement.
A quality review where the firm has no track record
ACCA explains that ISQM 1 requires an engagement quality review on audits of listed companies, on audits and other engagements where law or regulation requires one, and where the firm decides a review is an appropriate response to one or more quality risks. ACCA's examples of that third group include engagements for which the firm has no prior experience. Read the listed-company wording with care: the IAASB has said that narrow scope amendments arising from the revised definitions of listed and public interest entities in the IESBA Code take effect in December 2026.
Under the IESBA Code, a threat that is not at an acceptable level is met by eliminating its cause, applying safeguards, or declining or ending the engagement. The IESBA offers involving an additional reviewer as an example of a safeguard. For unfamiliar work, an engagement quality review is often the most natural safeguard there is.
Recording acceptance, specialists and a reviewer in Achekam
Achekam holds the record of each step; the judgement stays with the firm.
- Acceptance. Under Quality & Governance, Client Acceptance & Continuance, a firm records a client acceptance review after a conflict check against its own clients and contacts, and only a signed-in partner can approve it. Customer due diligence is a tick-box confirmation by the preparer; Achekam runs no automatic FICA, CIPC or sanctions check. Write the competence assessment into the review itself, so the partner approves it knowingly.
- Specialists. On an audit, specialists can be recorded through the Specialists & Experts screen. The Audit Resource Pools and Delivery Centres screens stay empty, because nothing adds a pool or a centre, so do not plan staffing around them.
- Quality reviewer. A partner can name an engagement quality reviewer, who must be a partner or senior manager not on the engagement team, and that person must clear the audit report before it can be issued. For a South African firm Achekam does not require a reviewer for any engagement type; naming one is the firm's decision. Where the right reviewer sits outside the firm, the firm's own arrangement is to invite that person in as a member holding a partner or senior manager role.
The acceptance routine itself is covered in more detail in client acceptance and conflict checks.
When to refer the work elsewhere
Sometimes the honest answer is no. If the knowledge cannot be brought in before the work begins, if the only available expert is conflicted, or if the client's timetable leaves no room to learn, declining protects the client as much as the firm. Refer the client to a practice that does this work regularly, and record the reason in the acceptance review so the decision is visible later.
ACCA's technical article on ISQM 1 explains the components a firm's system of quality management must address, and is a useful reference when writing the firm's own acceptance policy.
The record a reviewer hopes to find is short and specific: what the firm did not know, how it found out, who checked the result, and who said yes.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
