So if that is assurance, improving the quality of information, maybe even by improving it's context for decision makers and users, how much assurance needs to be provided? So here are some interesting terms that have been used in different professional standards according to the IAASB, The International Accounting and Auditing Standards Board, the PCAOB, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. The first one is a global organization. The second one is set within the United States, which is set up as a regulator, and for public companies, the auditing standard-setter. That was established by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act back in 2001, or the AICPA, which we've already mentioned. In these...each of these bodies have a book. If you printed out all the pages of standards, there's a lot. It's pretty thick. And within these books, or electronic documents really, you see different kinds of adjectives being used to modify the term assurance. So you can have, perhaps, meaningful assurance, high assurance, nominal, reasonable, and limited. Of course I don't expect you to know which of these adjectives are the ones that you see, just yet. But you should know after this module. You actually see quite of few of these within the standards. The most important one for the financial statement auditor is the term reasonable assurance. Reasonable assurance has a synonym, and if you were to look at this particular slide, and you see reasonable assurance, what is the other one that is listed there that would connote the same thing? That would mean essentially the same thing. Is it limited? Is it meaningful? Is it nominal? Well, you can probably cross out nominal. Nominal is very minimal. The term that the standard settings bodies now use to help users and auditors understand how much assurance they need to provide is high insurance. Reasonable assurance is high assurance. High assurance is more than limited assurance, but it is not the same thing as absolute assurance, okay? Auditors are not in the certitude business. They, however, are in the business of providing reasonable assurance. For some types of engagements, a CPA can provide limited assurance, but not within the context of a financial statement audit. Limited assurance is less and although conclusions do accompany limited assurance engagements, you don't see opinions. Opinions are different... are a special type of conclusion. Opinions require sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a positive basis to have this opinion. Limited assurance will say something like the following, nothing has come to our attention that there is a material misstatement within these, let's say, financial statements. Whereas an opinion is we have conducted an audit and our opinion is that the financial statements are free of material misstatement. You see the difference? One is saying nothing has come to my attention, limited assurance. But the other, high assurance, reasonable assurance, is saying, we've done quite a bit of work here in terms of gathering sufficient, competent, appropriate evidence, that we now have a basis to render an opinion that these financial statements, they're free of material misstatement. And we'll get into what is meant by a material misstatement down the road.
