Specimen Control Objectives within the ISAE 3402 Standard

ISAE 3402 for assurance reporting will ultimately create more transparency, clarity, and consistency when reporting on service organizations throughout the globe. The standard itself is likely to be adopted by a large number of entities, but a number of practitioners advocated incorporating "specimen" control objectives-control objectives developed by a number of well-recognized organizations and standard setters. They argued that the adoption of specimen control objectives would lead to more consistency and uniformity for ISAE 3402 assurance reports. Currently, the IAASB has not ruled this out and will likely take this into consideration in future meetings.

This has been, and will continue to be, a notable topic that will garner much attention as much criticism has been levied on country and region specific standards for being too flexible and loose, resulting in a myriad of control objectives being used for assurance reporting. Specimen control objectives would be a step in the right direction, as long as they are adopted from well-recognized organizations and standard setters, and if they are limited in how many may be utilized for purposes of ISAE 3402 assurance reporting on service organizations.

A careful balance should be struck in the future regarding control objectives that utilize a select number of specimen control objectives, while still allowing the service organization to develop their own set of controls for ISAE 3402 reporting.