Lee, Tom A.

born 1941 A British academic, author, and auditing specialist. Professor Emeritus of Accountancy at the University of Alabama, and Honorary Professor of Accounting at Dundee University in Scotland, Lee’s contributions to auditing include the landmark book Company Auditing (1972). This was one of the first theoretical studies of external auditing in the United Kingdom, and it developed themes set out a decade earlier in Mautz and Sharaf’s *Philosophy of Auditing. Lee updated and revised Company Auditing as Corporate Audit Theory in 1993. Lee has also written many articles of auditing, and he has been a noted critic of external auditing practices. In the aftermath of the accounting scandals at *Enron and *WorldCom, he wrote of the "shame" of the auditing profession (Lee, 2002, 212). He has been equally critical of academic accountants, claiming that they "have fiddled while Rome burned" (Lee, 2002, 212) in neglecting the implications of allegedly declining external auditing standards. Lee’s other areas of interest include auditing history and *financial reporting. Further reading: Lee (1972); Lee (1988); Lee (1993); Lee (2001); Lee (2002)