Watchdog,
What dodgybrothers said: 'no they are
not [professional].'
In fact, the reported conduct of the CASA personnel seems so far removed from the minimum standards of ethical conduct expected in such circumstances that it's a total disgrace.
Perhaps you don't understand that in
any audit, ethical requirements are required to be met by auditors to provide a reasonable assurance of their independence, and to ensure that the conduct of auditors will not increase what's termed 'familiarity threat' to an unacceptable level where true independence is no longer assured?
The reported conduct of the CASA personnel in this case sounds like they completely failed to meet, understand, or possibly deliberately ignored, the relevant ethical requirements reasonably expected of them.
Whatever, and if what's reported to have happened is in fact true, then the senior management of CASA (oxymoron??) should take immediate and appropriate action to address the organisation's lack of policies or procedures that resulted in such a breach of ethics.
Past performance tells me that it won't though.
