Is it time to review additional responsibilites given to practising professionals?

In the recent years, the response of every professional institute(ICAI, ICSI, ICWAI) to corporate scams, is to indirectly demand additional work for their members. Whether it be precertifying annual returns, allowing fast track process for optionally precertified forms(like availability of name application approved instantly online in such cases), increasing number/scope of audits(secretarial audit, borrower compliance certificate etc), the desired and conferred work have only increased.

But in their zeal to get assignments and execute them quickly, are professionals blindly signing forms? In a June-11 circular(http://www.mca.gov.in/Ministry/pdf/Notice_23jun2011.pdf), the Ministry of Company Affairs pointed the case of 11 companies(including a few listed companies like Raj TV) where a basic data field(number of shareholders) was given absurdly high/low numbers which besides being patently absurd violated even the statutory norms/previously filed returns. This reflects poorly on the preparer(company) but even more on the certifying professional, who receives his fees for verifying the return. There is no excuse for this lapse, because even a cursory sanity check would have revealed the absurdity of this.

With responsibility comes accountability. If professionals do not show themselves to be worthy of this trust, then their license to practise should be suspended. Alternately, we should bar such professionals from practise for say 1 month, to set an example for others. After all, the need of professionals was precisely to prevent such garbage values, but now this is happening.