How A Fee Dispute is Handled

The OSCPA’s Professional Responsibility Team seeks to promote consumer satisfaction with Oregon CPAs and their services within the framework of the OSCPA’s mission to serve the public and its members. The Team has two functions when it is called upon to investigate a dispute between a CPA and a client related to fees and the value provided for the service performed:

• Resolution of disagreements between clients and CPAs over the cost and value of professional services.
• Prevention of conflict through the education of CPAs and the public.

In seeking to reconcile fee disputes between clients and CPAs the Team acts as a forum in which both parties are given an opportunity to voice their disagreements before a neutral person – a volunteer representative of the OSCPA Professional Responsibility Team. The Team encourages both parties to listen to each other and to re-establish communications where they have perhaps been severed.

The Team is not endowed with any formal powers. It cannot arbitrate or mediate disagreements by dictating solutions. It works solely through informal means of listening, helping both sides articulate concerns and enabling them to discover creative ways of resolving conflict.

The Professional Responsibility Team encourages CPAs to use engagement letters, talk frankly with clients about fees (at the outset and at critical junctures of an engagement) and to clarify the services clients will receive so “expectation gaps” can be prevented.

For more information please contact Cheryl L. Langley, President, Oregon Society of CPAs at 1-800-255-1470, ext. 25 or by e-mail rhmranru@yuyti.cvt.