Navigate the new Quality Management Standards (CSQM) and excel in practice inspections. Unlock strategies for compliance, manage risks, and ensure your firm's professional excellence.
This is the recorded version of our two live Q&A sessions, which took place on August 12th and August 26th, 2025.
Since December 2022, firms performing assurance engagements, and following in 2023, firms performing only compilation engagements, have been required to have designed, implemented, documented, and monitored a system of quality management (SoQM).
The objectives of this risk-based system of quality management are ensure that the firm has a formal set of documented policies and procedures to ensure the firm complies with professional standards and regulatory requirements. Formalized policies, procedures, and processes give regulators like Provincial CPA bodies, and ultimately the public, confidence in the quality of the firms services and reports.
Regulators around the world are focusing more on a firm’s policies and processes in their regulatory inspections, rather than reviewing files and inferring the quality of the underlying processes.
In order to improve audit quality and protect the public interest, regulators are increasingly taking a tougher approach to inspections and adherence to documentation standards and the CPA Canada Handbook or Code of Professional Conduct rules.
Firms are increasingly failing inspections and being charged with disciplinary violations. The largest impact has been felt by firms performing only compilation engagements because they were previously not required to maintain a system of quality management under CSQC1.
Format: The session will be a live Q&A session with Marcus Guenther of FocusHGK LLP, the former author of CPA Canada’s Quality Management Manual and full-time consultant to CPA firms, focusing on:
AJAG Professional Development was founded in 2003 with a mission of making professional development easier and more cost-effective for Canadian accountants and other financial advisory professionals. Our comprehensive range of flexible and reasonably-priced courses, programs and seminars are delivered online and in classroom-style settings in the Greater Toronto Area (Toronto, Oakville and Markham). AJAG features a roster of highly-qualified instructors who deliver content that is pertinent, up-to-date and engaging.
Marcus Guenther works with corporations and accounting firms to improve their workflow, internal control and risk management practices, as well as assisting with technical accounting and auditing issues. He is the co-author of the CICA Professional Engagement Manual (CPEM) as well as other technical publications and articles and teaches accounting, IFRS, and auditing and assurance courses for numerous professional organizations. Marcus was previously a Senior Manager at BDO Dunwoody LLP, where he was responsible for audit, tax and accounting engagements.
Provincial regulators of CPAs in Canada do not require that independent providers of CPD be approved to offer courses. Instead, individual CPAs are responsible for assessing whether a CPD activity meets their requirements, and may take activities from any source provided those requirements are met.
Every course offered on LearnFormula is delivered by a qualified subject matter expert or learning organization, and advances learning objectives that are relevant to the responsibilities or professional competencies of Canadian CPAs. All activities on LearnFormula are quantifiable in terms of hours, and are also verifiable, in that users receive documented evidence of their attendance via a certificate of completion after finishing a course (and this certificate is stored by LearnFormula indefinitely). Nearly 100,000 Canadian CPAs successfully satisfy their CPD requirements via LearnFormula on an annual basis.
