Everyone has to bend or break rules sometimes. Give me an example when you had to that in auditing or accounting.
"I have no real world auditing experience, but I do know that ethically you can't break the rules of SOX compliance. There are ways to bend the rules slightly by finding middle ground or exemptions to disallow for failures on certain aspects. I'm unsure of the exact process, but I can and will find out how that's done. Ethics is what makes or breaks an accountant or auditor so you should never want someone to break the rules while working with your company because they can be criminally charged."
"Bending and breaking rules is nothing that should ever happen. If you've heard of ENRON or WorldCom, then you know that when auditors break rules it's a legal matter than can get not only the auditor arrested and de-certificated but the company management as well. Now, if you're looking for a compromise where we can avoid failing an audit, there are options by scoping or documenting processes to give the auditors. Or there are exemption reports we can submit to disallow external auditors from looking for that documentation for a certain period of time. This just delays when they'll look for the documentation."
This is a double-edged sword question. You don't want them to think you're a rule breaker, but if if you need to be flexible, at times it could be necessary. The best way to answer this question is to fall back on your ethics and find a compromise rather than bend or break the rules. It's a violation of SOX compliance to break the rules regarding auditing. This is how CPA's lose their licenses and even go to prison. Be careful how you answer this question.
If you have no auditing experience, this is a much safer question to answer but I'd still be very careful about anything you decide to share. No one wants to hire a criminal but they do want you to play ball.
"I've never broken the auditing or SOX compliance rules knowingly because that would threaten my license. When struggling with an audit, I've made safe compromises with a client. I had one client who was in trouble with the audit and I helped them process some exemption forms before handing the documentation to the external auditors. This allowed them time to get their documentation in line but didn't break any rules."
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