At Lander International we are celebrating our 30th anniversary, so we've been through recessions before, but we feel the effect of the current economic downturn on the audit profession has been profound. Departments across the nation have had to scale back, the Big 4 public accounting firms have laid off record numbers of talented auditors at all levels from partner to new staff. Everyone is wondering how much longer the current downturn will last.

At the 2009 IIA General Audit Management Conference in Washington DC we launched a survey asking the leaders for their opinions on the direction of the economy and the impact and implications of the economic situation for the Audit profession. The initial survey results were so interesting that we decided to expand our sampling of participants to include the attendees at the MIS Training Institute's Super Strategies Conference in Las Vegas. Because so many renowned audit groups were not represented at these two events, we decided to reach out to Audit leadership across the country for their thoughts.