Tyco's former outsideauditor, Richard Scalzo, testified that he had raised some of the biggest disputed bonus payments at a board audit-committee meeting, where he discussed their accounting treatment.
James A. Gross, professor of labor relations at Cornell University said using an outsideauditor "frees the company of any independent supervision or assessment of what they are doing, " he said.
The investigation found that we did not have such expertise because we did not adequately support and invest in accounting functions, did not sufficiently develop our own expertise in technical accounting, and as a result, we relied more heavily than appropriate on our then outsideauditor.