What impact has Sarbanes-Oxley had on the audit profession?

So far, most of the attention has been on the costs it's imposed on companies.

For example, with the law due for changes when the Securities and Exchange Commission holds its open meeting on December 13, billionaire publisher and former Presidential candidate Steve Forbes has come out predicting a major overhaul of the "onerous" legislation, reports IT Week.

The law, he said, just siphons off the creativity that underpins business success and growth.

Forbes said: "The brain power and time that goes into [complying] should be spent on productive pursuits rather than on this activity that does very little in either improving internal procedures or preventing crime. I think there is going to be, and should be, a relook at Sarbanes Oxley in a more calm atmosphere now that Jeffrey Skilling is going to be out of circulation for a while."

His comments echo those of Treasury secretary Hank Paulson who was reported this week reiterating that the law needs changing because it's overwhelmed American companies.

The impact on auditors, however, might be more insidious.

That's certainly the implication in a piece from Floyd Norris in the New York Times via the International Herald Tribune.

Auditors are becoming the butt of jokes but behind the humor there is a real problem. According to Norris, auditors are now paid a lot more but delivering less because of Sarbanes-Oxley in a classic case of ass-covering.

"Executives who talk to me usually say their local audit partner is just fine, but they bristle at rules imposed by the firm's national office and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and the SEC.

"They complain that audits of internal controls under Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 are too detailed and too expensive and have made auditing firms rich without accomplishing much for the clients.

"They say auditors used to offer advice on how to account for a transaction but now are unwilling to do so out of fear that they will be accused of auditing their own work or of helping to structure a deal intended to make the company look better than it should. There is some truth in all those complaints, and the SEC and the accounting oversight board, as well as the firms themselves, are trying to deal with specific issues."

The choice then boils down to this: do you gut a law, badly constructed without any cost-benefit analysis, that auditors and accountants love, or do you limit their liability.