What is Without Question® about?
Sometimes you just get too close. Assume too much. Don’t ask that extra question…and regret it.”
This statement is relevant to many characters in Without Question, ICAEW’s second drama production in its training film series.
The film begins with a meeting of key members of the Holt family, founding directors/shareholders of Rapston Hotels, a hotel development and management company. The family is divided on the strategy for the future, and when other family shareholders decide they want to sell their interest, Robert Holt, Chief Executive, suggests launching an IPO (an Initial Public Offering), which at first seens to be a neat way of ending the war, but his decision puts the company and its auditors and other professional advisers under strain and sets off a chain of events that no one expected.
Martin Jelani thinks it will be just another waste of his time giving a free tax lecture at his firm. However, his day gets a lot more interesting when he thinks he might have sparked interest in a relief claim from Rapston Hotels.
Will Jackson, Partner at AWR Accountants, Rapston’s auditors, is frustrated with being caught in the family crossfire, so is initially pleased to hear of the IPO. But, as it unfolds, he underestimates the pressures it brings and the impact on his audit team. The last thing he needs is for Karen Walker, Rapston’s Finance Director, to pursue an aggressive tax relief claim championed by a rival firm (while also at the same time undertaking Rapston’s first foreign hotel development). Will also doesn’t realise he’s in for a big wake-up call on the dangers of social media. He subsequently makes a series of decisions and assurances rooted in insufficient evidence, poor communication and a lack of professional scepticism.
As the film follows the company and its auditors over several years, viewers see the struggles the new board faces, and the difficulties founding directors experience in relinquishing control. Audiences also witness how the decision of Rapston’s financial director, Karen Walker, to pursue an aggressive tax relief claim, and Robert’s son Sebastian’s determination to develop Rapston’s first foreign development, expose the firm to financial and reputational risk.
The film uses the characters’ dilemmas to draw out the need to exercise professional scepticism, the pressures placed on auditors by clients, the importance of strong leadership, and the consequences of failing to ask the right questions of professional advisors.