Here's the lowdown
Dave Sullivan has been named CEO of the Center for Audit Quality, the policy organization that represents U.S. public-company auditors.
Sullivan spent more than 35 years at Deloitte and held senior audit-quality roles in the firm's U.S. and global operations.
His move creates another leadership change: the Financial Accounting Foundation is searching for a new chair of its accounting standards advisory council.
Dave Sullivan has spent decades inside the rooms where audit quality gets debated.
Now he will run one of the organizations that helps shape those debates.
The Center for Audit Quality named Sullivan its new chief executive officer. The CAQ represents the U.S. public-company audit profession and works with regulators, investors, audit committees, companies, and accounting firms.
That job sounds like association management. It is really a seat at the policy table.
The CAQ sits between firms and the market
The CAQ is not an audit regulator. It cannot inspect a firm or issue an accounting standard.
Its influence comes from convening the people who do those jobs and speaking for public-company auditors when rules and policy are being shaped. That includes work with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
The group's stated mission is to improve audit quality and support investor trust in U.S. capital markets. In practice, that means weighing in on the standards, reporting expectations, and oversight questions that determine how audit firms operate.
Sullivan will lead that work while corporate reporting, technology, and audit oversight are all changing at once.
His resume runs across the audit system
Sullivan spent more than 35 years at Deloitte. His roles included global audit and assurance quality leader and U.S. audit and assurance quality leader.
He also served on the CAQ's Professional Practice Executive Committee and the PCAOB's Standing Advisory Group. Earlier in his career, he was a practice fellow at the Financial Accounting Standards Board.
That mix matters. Sullivan has seen audit policy from inside a large firm, from advisory bodies that inform regulators and standard setters, and from the CAQ itself.
The CAQ's appointment announcement says he will guide the organization's engagement across the financial reporting system. That includes regulators, investors, audit committees, public companies, and policymakers.
The obvious question is whose concerns rise to the top when those groups disagree.
One appointment creates another vacancy
Sullivan is also the current chair of the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council, better known as FASAC. The council advises the FASB on its agenda, priorities, and the issues facing people who prepare and use financial statements.
The Financial Accounting Foundation has begun searching for Sullivan's successor. FASB assistant director Alicia Manders will facilitate council meetings in the meantime.
At the CAQ, Sullivan succeeds Julie Bell Lindsay, who left in April. AICPA president and CEO Mark Koziel had been serving as acting chief executive during the transition.
Sullivan arrives with a long list of audit-quality credentials. The more revealing part will come next: which policy fights the CAQ chooses, how it balances firm and investor concerns, and what it asks regulators to change.
