Campaign for hearts and minds

摘要

Practice Assurance may have won the vote but it remains to be seen whether it will win the hearts and minds of those practitioners who are now subject to quality assurance monitoring from the ICAEW. The promised rebellion which at one stage threatened to kill off Practice Assurance never materialised and in the end the vote was passed with a comfortable majority of 77.4%. The institute can look back with some satisfaction at a campaign where it convinced enough members that Practice Assurance was the right step forward and that it would not be a hammer to crack a nut. Those who opposed Practice Assurance will now want to ensure that the institute keeps to its promise that the scheme will be implemented in a sensible and realistic manner where the emphasis will be on (in the institute's words) 'supporting firms and identifying sources of guidance to enable members to address areas of potential risk or concern'.