Statement at the Fall 2026 SEIAG Meeting

Remarks as prepared for delivery 

Good morning, everyone. And thank you for being here and, more importantly, for being willing to tell us what you actually think. Before I start, the usual disclaimer: these are my views and not necessarily those of the Board, my fellow Board members, or the staff.

Looking at today’s agenda, there’s a theme running through a lot of it: transparency. 

Take the conceptual framework, for example. Part of what we are trying to figure out is how we can be clearer about how we make standard-setting decisions: what problems we decide to take on, why we take them on, what alternatives we consider, and ultimately whether what we did actually worked.

And I think you can see that same approach in what we are doing with inspections. We have been putting ideas in front of the IMC, talking about them with groups like IAG, and now we are bringing them to you. The Board also recently authorized the public release of the inspection modernization discussion materials, reflecting the significant public interest in these issues. That’s why meetings like today’s matter. These are difficult questions, and we certainly don’t have all the answers. In fact, that’s exactly why we need to have these conversations, before the answers are settled.

So, please keep putting ideas out there. Let people kick the tires. Tell us where we may be wrong. And hopefully, at the end of that process, we come up with something better.

I care about transparency for another reason. I have talked quite a bit about regulation by enforcement and, sometimes, regulation by inspection. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins made this point in a recent SEC podcast. He talked about avoiding regulation through enforcement by “setting clear expectations, clear rules,” rather than bringing an enforcement case against the private sector and essentially saying, you should have known, even though it was not clear. To me, transparency is a big part of the answer. People should know the rules of the game. If we expect people to comply with a rule, standard, or regulatory expectation, they ought to be able to understand what that expectation is before we judge their conduct against it.

And there is another benefit of transparency that we probably do not talk about enough: transparency makes it more likely that the fair, publicly viewable processes we implement today have a better chance to endure in the future regardless of changes in the political system. Boards change. Administrations change. Priorities change. That is normal. But if we explain publicly what we are doing and why we are doing it, somebody who wants to reverse course later can still do that. They should just have to make their changes in a way that is visible to the public, with zero ambiguity that a change has occurred. I think that is healthy.

In general, I think transparent regulators are better regulators. So, in that light, I am encouraged by the commitment to transparency reflected in today’s agenda and, more broadly, in the work underway at the PCAOB.

And that brings me to my pitch for the members of this advisory committee today: be candid with us. If something does not make sense, tell us. Just this week, for example, I received some thoughtful suggestions about where greater clarity may be needed in the digital-assets space. If there is something we are missing, tell us that too. Big idea, small idea, criticism, whatever it is, I want to hear it. My door is always open, and these conversations do not have to end when today’s meeting does.

Thanks again for being here.