Sarbanes' Pain Getting Sharp for Some

"Somewhere out there is the person who will be the poster child that blew Sarbanes-Oxley. Nobody wants to be that guy," Brotman said.

But corporate managers are facing those fears, too. And some observers think that accounting firms are playing on that fear to "gold-plate" their audits by either overcharging or by charging for services that companies don't really need. Helping them do that is the fact that Arthur Andersen's demise has led to limited competition.

"I don't believe the auditors went into this thinking they're going to get wealthy, but they now have an umbrella above them: If you want their imprimatur, this is what it's going to take -- take or leave it," said Allied's Meyer. "I know they have some increased pressure on them, but those costs are being passed to their customers, to yours truly."

Accounting industry representatives deny that they are gold-plating their services.

"Are public accounting firms gouging clients? The answer is no, they are not," said Stephen Wagner, co-chairman of the Sarbanes-Oxley steering committee at accounting giant Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.

Indeed, some accounting experts believe the auditors are merely doing what is required of them under the law.

"The auditors don't have a choice," said Chuck Mulford, a professor of accounting at Georgia Institute of Technology. "They have to make sure the clients evaluate these things. And they have to make themselves comfortable that the client has evaluated these things. That's an expensive undertaking."

And some observers blame the companies themselves for the expense. Good companies already should have had control systems and documentation in place, said Elliot Schwartz, director of research at the Council of Institutional Investors. It's quite possible that many companies were underinvesting in their auditing departments, Schwartz said.

"The appropriate baseline for measuring the extra costs isn't necessarily what companies were spending before Sarbanes-Oxley," Schwartz said. If a company had only one person in its accounting department, "maybe they should have had two to begin with," he added.

Not every company is having trouble complying with the internal controls rule, accounting experts noted. Many companies either already had good systems in place or got a jump start on complying, they said.

"Some are way far ahead of the pack," said Deloitte's Wagner. "Where the noise is coming from is from those who started late and were more surprised about [the] magnitude of the effort required under the law."

Regardless, companies shouldn't be looking to the SEC for relief. The SEC already pushed back the deadline for complying with the new rule from June to November.

"Ideally, [companies] would have the maximum time they could get" to comply with the rule, said Donald Nicolaisen, the chief accountant of the SEC. But, he added, "I think they have had enough time."