Opportunity and Contributing Factors
5 minutes
5 Questions
In the Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) body of knowledge, 'Opportunity' is one of the three legs of Donald Cressey's Fraud Triangle, alongside Pressure (or incentive) and Rationalization. Opportunity refers to the perceived ability of an individual to commit fraud without being detected. Unlike pressure and rationalization, which are internal to the perpetrator and difficult for an organization to control, opportunity is largely shaped by the environment and is therefore the element over which management and anti-fraud professionals have the greatest influence. Opportunity typically arises from weak or absent internal controls, poor segregation of duties, inadequate oversight, and a lack of monitoring. For example, when one employee can both authorize payments and reconcile bank statements, the structural gap creates a pathway for embezzlement. Similarly, management override of controls, excessive trust in long-tenured employees, and complex or poorly understood transactions all expand opportunity. Contributing factors are the conditions that widen or reinforce opportunity and make fraud more likely to occur and persist. These include: a weak 'tone at the top' where leadership tolerates ethical lapses; inadequate audit functions or rarely performed surprise audits; absence of a whistleblower hotline or fear of retaliation that discourages reporting; high employee turnover that erodes institutional knowledge of controls; rapid organizational growth that outpaces control systems; reliance on manual processes vulnerable to manipulation; and insufficient background checks that allow individuals with prior misconduct to gain positions of trust. Economic downturns and remote-work environments can also reduce supervision and increase the perception that wrongdoing will go unnoticed. CFEs assess opportunity through risk assessments, control testing, and analytical procedures to identify red flags. By strengthening controls, promoting a culture of accountability, and increasing the perception of detection, organizations shrink the opportunity window. Because fraud generally requires all three triangle elements, eliminating or reducing opportunity is the most practical and effective deterrent available to organizations seeking to prevent financial crime.
Opportunity and Contributing Factors: A Complete CFE Exam Guide (Understanding Financial Crime)
1. Why This Topic Matters
Of the three legs of Cressey's Fraud Triangle (pressure, opportunity, rationalization), opportunity is the element an organization can most directly influence. Pressures live in an employee's private life and rationalizations live inside their head, but opportunity is created by the organization itself through weak controls, poor oversight and excessive trust. This is why the ACFE places such heavy emphasis on it: if you understand how opportunity arises and what factors contribute to it, you understand how fraud is prevented, detected and investigated.
On the CFE Exam, the Understanding Financial Crime (formerly Fraud Prevention and Deterrence) section tests this material heavily. Questions will ask you to identify which leg of the triangle a fact pattern illustrates, to recall what the research of Cressey, Albrecht, Hollinger and Clark and others found, and to recognise the organizational conditions the Report to the Nations identifies as enabling fraud. Mastering this topic also improves your performance in the Fraud Schemes and Investigation sections, because opportunity analysis is the foundation of risk assessment.
2. What Opportunity Is
In Cressey's formulation, opportunity is the perceived ability to commit fraud and, crucially, to conceal it without being detected. Two points deserve emphasis:
- The opportunity need only be perceived. The controls may actually be stronger than the fraudster believes, but if the person believes they can get away with it, the opportunity element is satisfied.
- Opportunity includes the ability to conceal. A person who can steal but cannot hide the theft does not, in Cressey's sense, perceive a real opportunity. Concealment is why fraudsters alter records, forge documents and create false journal entries.
Cressey identified two components of opportunity:
- General information: the knowledge that a position of trust can be violated. This often comes from seeing others do it, from past dishonesty, or simply from understanding how the system works.
- Technical skill: the ability actually to carry out the violation, which is usually the same skill set the person uses in their legitimate job. An accountant steals through journal entries; a warehouse worker steals inventory; a loan officer approves fictitious loans.
Cressey's trust violators occupied positions of financial trust. That position is itself part of the opportunity: the fraudster has access to assets or records precisely because the organization trusted them.
3. Contributing Factors: What Creates or Enlarges Opportunity
Opportunity rarely exists in isolation. It is created by a cluster of organizational and personal conditions. The ACFE materials, drawing on the Report to the Nations and academic research, highlight the following.
Internal control weaknesses
Year after year, the Report to the Nations finds that the most common primary weakness contributing to occupational fraud is a lack of internal controls (roughly one-third of cases), followed by override of existing internal controls and lack of management review. Together these three account for the majority of frauds. Specific weaknesses include:
- Inadequate segregation of duties (one person authorizes, records and has custody).
- Lack of independent checks, reconciliations and management review.
- Poor or missing documentation and audit trails.
- Failure to enforce existing policies (controls that exist on paper but not in practice).
- Inadequate physical safeguards over cash, inventory and records.
- Weak IT access controls and shared passwords.
Management override
Senior managers can bypass controls that constrain lower-level employees. This is why owner/executive frauds, while less frequent, cause far larger median losses than employee frauds. Override is also why financial statement fraud is so dangerous: the people who design the controls are the ones evading them.
Excessive trust and lack of oversight
Small organizations frequently rely on a single trusted bookkeeper with no independent review. Trust is not a control. The Report to the Nations consistently shows small businesses suffer disproportionately high median losses because they have fewer anti-fraud controls in place.
Tone at the top and organizational culture
Albrecht's research identified organizational factors that increase fraud risk, including placing too much trust in key employees, lack of proper authorization procedures, inadequate disclosure of personal investments and incomes, no separation of authorization and custody, lack of independent checks, inadequate attention to details, no separation of duties between accounting functions, and lack of clear lines of authority. A culture where management ignores ethical lapses, fails to discipline wrongdoers, or sets unrealistic performance targets both increases pressure and signals that detection is unlikely.
Perceived certainty of detection
Hollinger and Clark's study of over 10,000 employees found that the perceived certainty of being caught was a stronger deterrent than the perceived severity of punishment. In other words, employees who believe they will be detected are far less likely to steal. Low detection likelihood is therefore a direct contributing factor to opportunity. Their research also found that job dissatisfaction (feeling underpaid, unfairly treated or exploited) correlated strongly with employee theft and workplace deviance, and that younger, less tenured employees were more likely to engage in deviant behaviour.
Failure to prosecute or punish
When organizations quietly dismiss fraudsters rather than prosecuting, the fraudster moves on to a new victim and remaining employees learn that consequences are minimal. The Report to the Nations shows a significant share of victim organizations decline to refer cases to law enforcement, often citing fear of bad publicity or that internal discipline was sufficient.
Capability (the Fraud Diamond)
Wolfe and Hermanson added a fourth element, capability, arguing that opportunity opens the door but capability lets the person walk through it. Capability includes position or function, intelligence, ego or confidence, coercion skills, effective lying and resistance to stress. A fraud requiring complex concealment may be beyond an unsophisticated employee even when a control gap exists.
Collusion
Segregation of duties can be defeated when two or more people work together. The Report to the Nations shows that frauds involving multiple perpetrators produce substantially higher median losses than single-perpetrator frauds and that collusion is a common way controls are circumvented.
Other situational factors
- Rapid growth, high turnover or staffing shortages that leave controls unstaffed.
- Complex or unusual transactions that few people understand.
- Remote or decentralized operations with little head-office scrutiny.
- Lack of a fraud awareness training programme and lack of a reporting hotline (tips are the most common detection method, and organizations without hotlines detect fraud more slowly and suffer larger losses).
- Long-tenured employees who never take vacation, which prevents others from reviewing their work.
4. How Opportunity Works in Practice: The Interaction of the Elements
Opportunity does not operate alone. Cressey's thesis is that fraud occurs when a person with a non-shareable financial problem (pressure) perceives an opportunity to solve it secretly by violating a position of trust and is able to rationalize the act as consistent with their self-image as an honest person.
Albrecht's Fraud Scale illustrates the interaction: when situational pressures and perceived opportunities are high and personal integrity is low, fraud is much more likely. The three move together; a person of modest integrity may resist when controls are tight but succumb when they discover no one reconciles the account.
A typical progression looks like this:
1. An employee in a position of trust experiences a pressure (debt, addiction, lifestyle, performance targets).
2. In the course of their work they notice a gap: a reconciliation nobody performs, a signature stamp left unsecured, a vendor file nobody reviews.
3. They test the gap with a small amount. Nothing happens, confirming the perceived opportunity and the low certainty of detection.
4. They rationalize (borrowing, underpaid, everyone does it).
5. The fraud escalates and continues until detected, with the median occupational fraud lasting about a year before discovery.
Understanding this sequence explains why anti-fraud strategy focuses on reducing perceived opportunity: strong controls, visible monitoring, mandatory vacations and job rotation, hotlines, surprise audits, and publicized consequences all raise the perceived certainty of detection and shrink the opportunity leg.
5. How to Answer Exam Questions on Opportunity and Contributing Factors
CFE questions on this topic typically fall into a few patterns.
Pattern A: Classify the fact pattern. You are given a scenario and asked which element of the Fraud Triangle it illustrates. Ask yourself: Is this about why the person needed money (pressure)? Is it about how they justified it (rationalization)? Or is it about what allowed them to do it and hide it (opportunity)? Anything about weak controls, access, lack of review, trust, or ability to conceal is opportunity.
Pattern B: Recall the research. Know who found what:
- Cressey: non-shareable financial problem, perceived opportunity (general information plus technical skill), rationalization; studied embezzlers (trust violators).
- Albrecht: Fraud Scale (situational pressure, perceived opportunity, personal integrity); lists of personal red flags and organizational factors.
- Hollinger and Clark: perceived certainty of detection is the strongest deterrent; job dissatisfaction drives deviance; studied employee theft broadly, not just embezzlement.
- Wolfe and Hermanson: Fraud Diamond adding capability.
Pattern C: Statistics from the Report to the Nations. Know that lack of internal controls is the most frequently cited primary weakness, followed by override of controls and lack of management review; that tips are the leading detection method; that small organizations and frauds with multiple perpetrators suffer higher median losses; and that owners and executives cause the largest losses despite committing the fewest frauds.
Pattern D: Identify the control response. Given a weakness, select the control that reduces the opportunity (for example, segregation of duties for a single-handed bookkeeper, mandatory vacations for an employee who never takes leave, independent reconciliation for unreviewed accounts).
Pattern E: True or false conceptual statements. Watch for statements such as opportunity must be real rather than perceived (false), the severity of punishment is the strongest deterrent (false according to Hollinger and Clark), or trust is an effective internal control (false).
6. Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Opportunity and Contributing Factors
1. Look for the word perceived. The exam frequently tests that opportunity is a matter of the fraudster's perception, not objective reality. If an answer choice omits perception or insists the opportunity must actually exist, be suspicious.
2. Remember that concealment is part of opportunity. If a scenario describes someone altering records to hide a theft, that describes exploitation of opportunity, not a separate element.
3. Separate the three legs cleanly. Pressure is about the fraudster's needs; rationalization is about the fraudster's justification; opportunity is about the organization's weaknesses and the fraudster's access and skill. Mixed-up answer choices are the classic distractor.
4. Associate each researcher with one signature finding. Cressey equals non-shareable problem and trust violation; Albrecht equals Fraud Scale and integrity; Hollinger and Clark equals certainty of detection and job dissatisfaction; Wolfe and Hermanson equals capability. If a question mentions a researcher, recall their signature idea first.
5. Opportunity is the leg management controls. If asked which element organizations can most effectively address, choose opportunity, reduced through internal controls and increased perception of detection.
6. Know the top three control weaknesses in order. Lack of internal controls, override of existing controls, lack of management review. Questions often ask for the single most common weakness; the answer is lack of internal controls.
7. Trust is never the correct control. Any answer suggesting that hiring trustworthy people or relying on long-tenured staff is a sufficient safeguard is wrong.
8. Watch for small-business and collusion cues. If a question stresses a small organization or multiple perpetrators, the expected answer usually involves fewer controls, higher median losses or circumvention of segregation of duties.
9. Capability is distinct from opportunity. Opportunity is the open door; capability is the personal traits that let someone recognise and exploit it. If a question mentions ego, confidence, lying skill or coercion, think Fraud Diamond.
10. Read for what the question is really asking. Some questions describe a weak control and ask for the factor (opportunity); others describe a weak control and ask for the remedy (a specific control). Identify which before scanning the choices.
11. Eliminate absolutes. Choices containing always, never or only are usually wrong in this section, because the research speaks of likelihoods and correlations, not certainties.
12. When two answers look right, pick the one tied directly to detection likelihood or control gaps. The exam's underlying theme is that fraud flourishes where people believe they will not be caught, and almost every opportunity question comes back to that principle.
7. Quick Review Summary
- Opportunity: the perceived ability to commit and conceal fraud; composed of general information and technical skill; tied to a position of trust.
- Contributing factors: weak or absent internal controls, management override, lack of review, excessive trust, poor tone at the top, low perceived certainty of detection, job dissatisfaction, failure to prosecute, collusion, capability, rapid growth and complex transactions.
- Key research: Cressey (Fraud Triangle), Albrecht (Fraud Scale), Hollinger and Clark (certainty of detection), Wolfe and Hermanson (Fraud Diamond).
- Key data: lack of internal controls is the most common primary weakness; tips are the top detection method; small businesses and collusive frauds suffer larger losses.
- Exam approach: classify the element, recall the researcher's signature finding, link weaknesses to specific controls, and remember that opportunity is the element organizations can control.
Of the three legs of Cressey's Fraud Triangle (pressure, opportunity, rationalization), opportunity is the element an organization can most directly influence. Pressures live in an employee's private life and rationalizations live inside their head, but opportunity is created by the organization itself through weak controls, poor oversight and excessive trust. This is why the ACFE places such heavy emphasis on it: if you understand how opportunity arises and what factors contribute to it, you understand how fraud is prevented, detected and investigated.
On the CFE Exam, the Understanding Financial Crime (formerly Fraud Prevention and Deterrence) section tests this material heavily. Questions will ask you to identify which leg of the triangle a fact pattern illustrates, to recall what the research of Cressey, Albrecht, Hollinger and Clark and others found, and to recognise the organizational conditions the Report to the Nations identifies as enabling fraud. Mastering this topic also improves your performance in the Fraud Schemes and Investigation sections, because opportunity analysis is the foundation of risk assessment.
2. What Opportunity Is
In Cressey's formulation, opportunity is the perceived ability to commit fraud and, crucially, to conceal it without being detected. Two points deserve emphasis:
- The opportunity need only be perceived. The controls may actually be stronger than the fraudster believes, but if the person believes they can get away with it, the opportunity element is satisfied.
- Opportunity includes the ability to conceal. A person who can steal but cannot hide the theft does not, in Cressey's sense, perceive a real opportunity. Concealment is why fraudsters alter records, forge documents and create false journal entries.
Cressey identified two components of opportunity:
- General information: the knowledge that a position of trust can be violated. This often comes from seeing others do it, from past dishonesty, or simply from understanding how the system works.
- Technical skill: the ability actually to carry out the violation, which is usually the same skill set the person uses in their legitimate job. An accountant steals through journal entries; a warehouse worker steals inventory; a loan officer approves fictitious loans.
Cressey's trust violators occupied positions of financial trust. That position is itself part of the opportunity: the fraudster has access to assets or records precisely because the organization trusted them.
3. Contributing Factors: What Creates or Enlarges Opportunity
Opportunity rarely exists in isolation. It is created by a cluster of organizational and personal conditions. The ACFE materials, drawing on the Report to the Nations and academic research, highlight the following.
Internal control weaknesses
Year after year, the Report to the Nations finds that the most common primary weakness contributing to occupational fraud is a lack of internal controls (roughly one-third of cases), followed by override of existing internal controls and lack of management review. Together these three account for the majority of frauds. Specific weaknesses include:
- Inadequate segregation of duties (one person authorizes, records and has custody).
- Lack of independent checks, reconciliations and management review.
- Poor or missing documentation and audit trails.
- Failure to enforce existing policies (controls that exist on paper but not in practice).
- Inadequate physical safeguards over cash, inventory and records.
- Weak IT access controls and shared passwords.
Management override
Senior managers can bypass controls that constrain lower-level employees. This is why owner/executive frauds, while less frequent, cause far larger median losses than employee frauds. Override is also why financial statement fraud is so dangerous: the people who design the controls are the ones evading them.
Excessive trust and lack of oversight
Small organizations frequently rely on a single trusted bookkeeper with no independent review. Trust is not a control. The Report to the Nations consistently shows small businesses suffer disproportionately high median losses because they have fewer anti-fraud controls in place.
Tone at the top and organizational culture
Albrecht's research identified organizational factors that increase fraud risk, including placing too much trust in key employees, lack of proper authorization procedures, inadequate disclosure of personal investments and incomes, no separation of authorization and custody, lack of independent checks, inadequate attention to details, no separation of duties between accounting functions, and lack of clear lines of authority. A culture where management ignores ethical lapses, fails to discipline wrongdoers, or sets unrealistic performance targets both increases pressure and signals that detection is unlikely.
Perceived certainty of detection
Hollinger and Clark's study of over 10,000 employees found that the perceived certainty of being caught was a stronger deterrent than the perceived severity of punishment. In other words, employees who believe they will be detected are far less likely to steal. Low detection likelihood is therefore a direct contributing factor to opportunity. Their research also found that job dissatisfaction (feeling underpaid, unfairly treated or exploited) correlated strongly with employee theft and workplace deviance, and that younger, less tenured employees were more likely to engage in deviant behaviour.
Failure to prosecute or punish
When organizations quietly dismiss fraudsters rather than prosecuting, the fraudster moves on to a new victim and remaining employees learn that consequences are minimal. The Report to the Nations shows a significant share of victim organizations decline to refer cases to law enforcement, often citing fear of bad publicity or that internal discipline was sufficient.
Capability (the Fraud Diamond)
Wolfe and Hermanson added a fourth element, capability, arguing that opportunity opens the door but capability lets the person walk through it. Capability includes position or function, intelligence, ego or confidence, coercion skills, effective lying and resistance to stress. A fraud requiring complex concealment may be beyond an unsophisticated employee even when a control gap exists.
Collusion
Segregation of duties can be defeated when two or more people work together. The Report to the Nations shows that frauds involving multiple perpetrators produce substantially higher median losses than single-perpetrator frauds and that collusion is a common way controls are circumvented.
Other situational factors
- Rapid growth, high turnover or staffing shortages that leave controls unstaffed.
- Complex or unusual transactions that few people understand.
- Remote or decentralized operations with little head-office scrutiny.
- Lack of a fraud awareness training programme and lack of a reporting hotline (tips are the most common detection method, and organizations without hotlines detect fraud more slowly and suffer larger losses).
- Long-tenured employees who never take vacation, which prevents others from reviewing their work.
4. How Opportunity Works in Practice: The Interaction of the Elements
Opportunity does not operate alone. Cressey's thesis is that fraud occurs when a person with a non-shareable financial problem (pressure) perceives an opportunity to solve it secretly by violating a position of trust and is able to rationalize the act as consistent with their self-image as an honest person.
Albrecht's Fraud Scale illustrates the interaction: when situational pressures and perceived opportunities are high and personal integrity is low, fraud is much more likely. The three move together; a person of modest integrity may resist when controls are tight but succumb when they discover no one reconciles the account.
A typical progression looks like this:
1. An employee in a position of trust experiences a pressure (debt, addiction, lifestyle, performance targets).
2. In the course of their work they notice a gap: a reconciliation nobody performs, a signature stamp left unsecured, a vendor file nobody reviews.
3. They test the gap with a small amount. Nothing happens, confirming the perceived opportunity and the low certainty of detection.
4. They rationalize (borrowing, underpaid, everyone does it).
5. The fraud escalates and continues until detected, with the median occupational fraud lasting about a year before discovery.
Understanding this sequence explains why anti-fraud strategy focuses on reducing perceived opportunity: strong controls, visible monitoring, mandatory vacations and job rotation, hotlines, surprise audits, and publicized consequences all raise the perceived certainty of detection and shrink the opportunity leg.
5. How to Answer Exam Questions on Opportunity and Contributing Factors
CFE questions on this topic typically fall into a few patterns.
Pattern A: Classify the fact pattern. You are given a scenario and asked which element of the Fraud Triangle it illustrates. Ask yourself: Is this about why the person needed money (pressure)? Is it about how they justified it (rationalization)? Or is it about what allowed them to do it and hide it (opportunity)? Anything about weak controls, access, lack of review, trust, or ability to conceal is opportunity.
Pattern B: Recall the research. Know who found what:
- Cressey: non-shareable financial problem, perceived opportunity (general information plus technical skill), rationalization; studied embezzlers (trust violators).
- Albrecht: Fraud Scale (situational pressure, perceived opportunity, personal integrity); lists of personal red flags and organizational factors.
- Hollinger and Clark: perceived certainty of detection is the strongest deterrent; job dissatisfaction drives deviance; studied employee theft broadly, not just embezzlement.
- Wolfe and Hermanson: Fraud Diamond adding capability.
Pattern C: Statistics from the Report to the Nations. Know that lack of internal controls is the most frequently cited primary weakness, followed by override of controls and lack of management review; that tips are the leading detection method; that small organizations and frauds with multiple perpetrators suffer higher median losses; and that owners and executives cause the largest losses despite committing the fewest frauds.
Pattern D: Identify the control response. Given a weakness, select the control that reduces the opportunity (for example, segregation of duties for a single-handed bookkeeper, mandatory vacations for an employee who never takes leave, independent reconciliation for unreviewed accounts).
Pattern E: True or false conceptual statements. Watch for statements such as opportunity must be real rather than perceived (false), the severity of punishment is the strongest deterrent (false according to Hollinger and Clark), or trust is an effective internal control (false).
6. Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Opportunity and Contributing Factors
1. Look for the word perceived. The exam frequently tests that opportunity is a matter of the fraudster's perception, not objective reality. If an answer choice omits perception or insists the opportunity must actually exist, be suspicious.
2. Remember that concealment is part of opportunity. If a scenario describes someone altering records to hide a theft, that describes exploitation of opportunity, not a separate element.
3. Separate the three legs cleanly. Pressure is about the fraudster's needs; rationalization is about the fraudster's justification; opportunity is about the organization's weaknesses and the fraudster's access and skill. Mixed-up answer choices are the classic distractor.
4. Associate each researcher with one signature finding. Cressey equals non-shareable problem and trust violation; Albrecht equals Fraud Scale and integrity; Hollinger and Clark equals certainty of detection and job dissatisfaction; Wolfe and Hermanson equals capability. If a question mentions a researcher, recall their signature idea first.
5. Opportunity is the leg management controls. If asked which element organizations can most effectively address, choose opportunity, reduced through internal controls and increased perception of detection.
6. Know the top three control weaknesses in order. Lack of internal controls, override of existing controls, lack of management review. Questions often ask for the single most common weakness; the answer is lack of internal controls.
7. Trust is never the correct control. Any answer suggesting that hiring trustworthy people or relying on long-tenured staff is a sufficient safeguard is wrong.
8. Watch for small-business and collusion cues. If a question stresses a small organization or multiple perpetrators, the expected answer usually involves fewer controls, higher median losses or circumvention of segregation of duties.
9. Capability is distinct from opportunity. Opportunity is the open door; capability is the personal traits that let someone recognise and exploit it. If a question mentions ego, confidence, lying skill or coercion, think Fraud Diamond.
10. Read for what the question is really asking. Some questions describe a weak control and ask for the factor (opportunity); others describe a weak control and ask for the remedy (a specific control). Identify which before scanning the choices.
11. Eliminate absolutes. Choices containing always, never or only are usually wrong in this section, because the research speaks of likelihoods and correlations, not certainties.
12. When two answers look right, pick the one tied directly to detection likelihood or control gaps. The exam's underlying theme is that fraud flourishes where people believe they will not be caught, and almost every opportunity question comes back to that principle.
7. Quick Review Summary
- Opportunity: the perceived ability to commit and conceal fraud; composed of general information and technical skill; tied to a position of trust.
- Contributing factors: weak or absent internal controls, management override, lack of review, excessive trust, poor tone at the top, low perceived certainty of detection, job dissatisfaction, failure to prosecute, collusion, capability, rapid growth and complex transactions.
- Key research: Cressey (Fraud Triangle), Albrecht (Fraud Scale), Hollinger and Clark (certainty of detection), Wolfe and Hermanson (Fraud Diamond).
- Key data: lack of internal controls is the most common primary weakness; tips are the top detection method; small businesses and collusive frauds suffer larger losses.
- Exam approach: classify the element, recall the researcher's signature finding, link weaknesses to specific controls, and remember that opportunity is the element organizations can control.
Test mode:
CFE - Opportunity and Contributing Factors Example Questions
Test your knowledge of Opportunity and Contributing Factors
Question 1
An accounts payable clerk works under a documented dual-approval control. Over several months, she notices that the approving manager signs invoice batches unread, and that a duplicate payment she once processed by mistake was never questioned. Facing medical debts and believing she is underpaid, she begins submitting invoices from a shell company she controls. When analyzing the Fraud Triangle, which factor BEST explains the opportunity element that enabled this scheme?
Question 2
In Cressey's research on trust violators, the perceived opportunity to commit fraud was described as consisting of which two components?
Question 3
A distribution company's inventory procedures are documented and pass a control design review. Warehouse staff have learned, however, that count variances are never followed up. A fraud examiner also notes several unexplained shrinkage write-offs. Management asks which change would most reduce the opportunity element of the Fraud Triangle for these employees. Which action should the fraud examiner recommend?
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