Just tell them they cannot sell any of their proliferating non-audit services to audit clients.

ECONOMIST: Accountants and lawyers

Andersen, notoriously, earned more from providing Enron with non-audit services than from the audit.

ECONOMIST: Only if it is properly governed

SEC, pointing to the bill's provisions on non-audit services, audit standard-setting and the greater distance of the board from the accountants.

ECONOMIST: Auditors

Many companies even now have only three to choose from, because they buy non-audit services from one of the big four.

ECONOMIST: The auditing profession is dangerously concentrated

In 2002 the Sarbanes-Oxley act limited what kind of non-audit services an American accounting firm can offer to an audit client.

ECONOMIST: The Big Four accounting firms

This is because newish rules, implemented in the wake of the scandals at Enron and other companies, ban auditors from offering a wide range of non-audit services.

ECONOMIST: Auditing

In fact, both said, they liked using their audit firm for non-audit services because they were comfortable with them and their auditor knew management and the business best.

FORBES: Consulting By Auditors: NYU Stern Ross Roundtable Explores Post-Enron Reemergence

But the rules have to address two issues: individuals' financial incentives, and those of the firm as a whole, of which the most important may be the non-audit services offered by auditors to their clients.

ECONOMIST: Accountancy

Both Comcast and PPG Industries spent more than 10% of total fees to Deloitte on non-audit related and tax services in 2011 and 2010, for example.

FORBES: Consulting By Auditors: NYU Stern Ross Roundtable Explores Post-Enron Reemergence

For accountants, the harshest aspect of the new legislation is its outright ban on nine kinds of non-audit service, including building financial-information systems, legal services and investment banking.

ECONOMIST: A tough corporate-reform bill sails through