Corporate scandals due to bad accounting happen far too frequently for a system of corporate governance to be deemed effective. This book tells why the safeguards designed to prevent bad accounting so often fail. By studying why the auditors and members of a board of directors regularly fail to deliver the truth about a company's financial state of affairs, this provocative book explores a serious problem in the system of reporting financial information.

This book is unique in that it draws together various strands of the literature on corporate governance, accounting, law, cognitive...