You audit accounts that are falsified and give thumbs up: you close shop, are held liable for damages and could go to prison.
Auditing companies are crucially important for a working economy. Bank loans, bonds, equity markets would all be chaos and fraud mayhem without them.
We might as well turn "audits" over to the short sellers like Hindenburg Research, at least they make money by exposing rotten accounts rather than hiding them.
The fact that being an activist short seller has become a business model in the last ~8 years tell you how bad the likes of EY are.
RATING agencies are different from AUDITING companies different from CONSULTANCIES.
Rating agencies were somewhat restructured after 2008 (but are still kind of edgy) - because they did literally write AAA on a piece of paper for money. But there ratings were opinions and had no real legal meaning.
Enron’s problem was the “consulting AND auditing” mess with conflict of interest if I am not mistaken.