Quality Management: The Next Steps

Overview

The AICPA’s Quality Management (QM) standards represent a fundamental shift from checklist based quality control to a risk based, integrated system that must be designed, operated, monitored and evaluated on an ongoing basis. Now that many firms have moved past initial implementation, the most common challenge is not design documentation, it is demonstrating and ensuring that the system actually works.

Quality Management: The Next Steps builds on the foundations of last year’s Quality Management: A Practical Approach course. The course shifts the emphasis from QM design documentation to considering whether a firm’s system is actually working by addressing mandatory annual monitoring and evaluation of effectiveness requirements.

Drawing on real world experience, case studies and peer review insights, this course helps participants consider whether their firm’s QM system is functioning as intended, start the process of monitoring the system and develop support for leadership’s required annual conclusion on system effectiveness.

Learning Objectives

• Discuss where QM system breakdowns most often occur
• Develop a plan to perform and document monitoring of the firm’s system as a whole
• Understand how monitoring and remediation serve as the feedback loop of a QM system
• Distinguish between documented policies and evidence of operational effectiveness
• Evaluate findings, determine root causes and develop remedial actions
• Understand how monitoring supports leadership’s required annual conclusion on the effectiveness of the firm’s QM system

Course Content Highlights

• QM Refresher (Brief): Where firms are now and why “implementation” is not the finish line
• Peer Review Insights: Common breakdowns firms experience after implementation
• Risk Based Monitoring Design: What to monitor, how often and why
• Findings, Deficiencies, and Root Cause: Making sense of results and avoiding surface fixes
• Annual Evaluation: Using monitoring evidence to support leadership’s conclusion

Target Audience

The course is aimed at firms that have designed and implemented a system of quality management and are now focused on evaluation and monitoring of their QM systems. This includes managing partners, quality control leaders, audit and accounting partners and managers, peer reviewers and professionals responsible for monitoring or remediation.

Why This Course Matters

As firms transition from system design to execution, regulators and peer reviewers are increasingly focused on whether QM systems operate effectively, not just whether they exist. Therefore, the key question for firms becomes not “Do we have a system?” but “Can we demonstrate that it works?” This course helps firms develop the monitoring and documentation needed to clearly explain how their QM systems address risk, and to support the annual partner conclusion required under the standards with meaningful, defensible evidence.

Overnight Accommodations

A block of rooms has been reserved at the at Milwaukee Marriott West in Waukesha for the night of Monday, October 19 and Tuesday, October 20, with a room rate of $169 - $219 (plus tax). To reserve a room in the block, please book online here by October 9 or call 262-574-0888 and mention you're attending the WICPA program.