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\u201cFire the auditor!\u201d Three words that Quantum CFO Mike Dodson vowed would never cross his lips were now being spoken aloud by Quantum\u2019s board.

\u201cFire these guys!\u201d was the message that Dodson received after weeks of personally rejecting the notion. \xa0

\u201cWe had been delisted, we were in the middle of a multiyear restatement, and there were lender issues,\u201d recalls Dodson, listing the action items that needed to be addressed to regain credibility with Quantum\u2019s investors and lenders.

\u201cIn the middle of all of this, the last thing that you want to do is to fire the auditor and start over,\u201d observes Dodson, while summoning up past experiences that seemed to counter the logic behind dismissing Quantum\u2019s auditor.

\u201cI was sticking to my guns,\u201d reports Dodson, who, along with Quantum\u2019s chief accountant, doubled back in hope of getting deeper insight into the auditor\u2019s progress or lack of it.

\u201cIt just started to feel like we were taking two steps forward and three steps back\u2014I remember thinking that we were not getting any buy-in from the auditor on what approach to use with regard to how we were going to get things done,\u201d continues Dodson, who adds that the restatement involved tens of thousands of transactions that went back several years.

\u201cFiring the auditor was against everything that I had believed up until that point,\u201d says Dodson, who recalls having a shared moment of insight with his chief accountant when they repeated back and forth to one another: \u201cWe are going to fire the auditor.\u201d

Concludes Dodson: \u201cThis was a defining moment for the company, and it became a lifesaver that made the difference in the entire process.\u201d\xa0\u2013Jack Sweeney

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