Forensic accounting" is a growing area of practice in which the knowledge, skills and abilities of advanced accounting are combined with investigative expertise and applied to legal problems. Forensic accountants are often asked to provide litigation support where they are called on to give expert testimony about financial data and accounting activities. In other more proactive engagements, they probe situations using special investigative accounting skills and techniques. Some even see forensic accounting as practiced by skilled accounting specialists becoming part and parcel of most financial audits--an extra quality control step in the auditing process that will help reduce financial statement fraud.