Cases held in courts of law are adversarial in nature. Civil courts will hear arguments between companies, husband and wife, insurance companies and claimants. Criminal courts will deal with matters between the authorities and the crooks. In addition to the two sides are independant parties, the judge, jury and expert witnesses.
An expert accounting witness is an accountant. He will have qualified as an accountant with a reputable body such as the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, and will therefore have the accreditation of Fellow of the Institute. However he may well be a full time expert, dealing only with cases that need expert technical accounting and business input in order to assist the court in making its decisions. It is possible that he does not service clients anymore who simply want their accounts preparing or their tax returns filing.
Witnesses are normally called to court because they have some information that needs presenting to the court. They may have been witness to a crime, or have other facts relevant to the case. In court they will be asked to relate the facts of what they know or what they saw exactly to the court in response to questions from a barrister. They must only speak of facts that they know to be true. On the other hand, an expert witness is allowed to give an opinion. He is allowed to say what he (or she) thinks.
The opinion must be based on supporting facts, therefore be a reasonable opinion. If the court do not understand a complex accounting matter and is to accept the explanation provided by an expert they must be conviced of that expert's reliability.
In order to present a credible face to the court an expert accountant will do a number of things. He will first make sure that his work is of the highest quality by reporting diligently. This will involve him having his work checked through by senior coleagues including the opinions he has presented. In the past an expert witness who was perhaps a partner in a firm of accountants would delegate the work to a junior member of staff. Accountancy and taxation work is carried out for clients in this fashion. However, when questioned in court many accountants were so unfamiliar with the reports they were supposed to have prepared that many were professionally embarrassed.
Today the best forensic accountants will undertake the bulk of the work on any case themselves, only delegating routine or repetitive analysis to others. In this way they should be fully conversant with all aspects of their report.
Accreditation will be sought by the expert accounting witness to support years of practical experience. Memberships of other professional bodies such as the Expert Witness Institute and the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners are credible supporting players to the Institute of Chartered Accountants. Additional qualifications can be obtained, such as those run by the Institute of Taxation or Master degrees from various universities.
By developing a track history of experience alongside professional memberships and other accreditation, the expert accountant is able to protect himself from serious challenge by a barrister. Failing to do so can mean that a court will ignore any opinion presented in a report and potentially favor the other side's expert witness instead.
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