Here's the lowdown
Steven Harris, a former Public Company Accounting Oversight Board member, has died.
He served two terms from 2008 through 2018 and founded the board's Investor Advisory Group.
Before joining the board, Harris helped draft the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act that created the PCAOB.
He helped build the watchdog before joining it
Here's what happened.
Steven Harris did not simply serve on the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. He helped write the law that made the board possible.
Harris spent more than 15 years as staff director and chief counsel of the Senate Banking Committee under Sen. Paul Sarbanes. That put him inside major fights over banking, securities laws, the savings and loan crisis, the 1987 stock market crash, and the mutual fund industry.
His work also included the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The law created the PCAOB after major accounting scandals shook confidence in public-company audits.
The Securities and Exchange Commission appointed Harris to the board in 2008. He served two terms through 2018.
He put investors inside the audit debate
Harris founded and chaired the PCAOB's Investor Advisory Group. The group gave investors a formal place to weigh in on audit quality, auditor independence, and the information an audit report should provide.
The PCAOB said Harris championed the board's mission and pushed priorities that later became part of its rulebook. Those included a more informative auditor's report, new disclosures that made auditors more accountable to investors, and broader work to improve audit quality.
His investor focus also crossed borders. From 2009 through 2016, Harris founded and chaired an investor and stakeholder working group at the International Forum of Independent Audit Regulators.
The through line was simple: an audit is not only a compliance exercise for the company and its accountants. It is supposed to help investors trust the numbers.
What does that mean for firms? Many of the transparency rules auditors now treat as normal grew from the investor-first agenda Harris pushed.
A career built around financial oversight
Harris's public-service career reached well beyond the PCAOB. He worked on congressional investigations and oversight, served as counsel to Sen. Donald Riegle and Rep. Barbara Jordan, and held legal roles at the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board and federal agencies.
He also worked in the private sector as a senior vice president and special counsel at APCO Worldwide, advising on corporate governance, investigations, crisis management, and financial transactions.
The PCAOB's official biography lists the long version of that career. The short version is that Harris spent decades working on the rules and institutions that sit between financial markets and the people asked to trust them.
His death closes a chapter for one of the people who helped design modern U.S. audit oversight, then spent ten years trying to make it work for investors.
