I thought I was experiencing déjà vu when I read the FT article on RSM Tenon.

It is only a few months since The Financial Reporting Council (the FRC) fined PwC £5m for misconduct in its audit of Connaught, as well as suffering a $1m fine for compliance failure on an audit of Merrill Lynch in the USA, and had its bank audit licence revoked in the Ukraine, after allegedly failing to unveil a £5.5bn balance sheet deficit at PrivatBank. Ouch.

So the revelation that the FRC fined PwC £5.1m (the largest fine in the FRC’s history) due to failure to “obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence and failures to exercise sufficient professional scepticism”, stunned me.

It is only natural for human error to occur from time to time, in any professional service organisation, even those of impeccable repute. The role of any audit engagement partner (in this case it was Nicholas Boden) is to define the parameters of the audit, to oversee it and to undertake the right checks and balances with their audit team, before issuing findings, to ensure errors of this magnitude are prevented.

Clearly this did not happen. Einstein quoted doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results, is a definition of insanity. Perhaps PwC’s Global Board need to pause and reflect on the recent emerging patterns, upgrade their processes and practices, and roll out robust, advanced training and development to audit partners and their teams, so that lessons can be learned, and fast.