Here we go. The books are closed and "busy season" for auditors has arrived. As you read this, crack teams of balance-sheet boffins are hunched over laptops, clutching checklists, scrolling through spreadsheets and asking awkward questions in the final push to the big year-end reporting season.

There is no mistake it is crunch time for the auditing profession. A slowing economy and banks' rising caution over lending is expected to spark a rise in business failures - which inevitably will produce the age-old question of "where were the auditors?"