According to a report Thursday by The Financial Times, PwC senior partners are worried that some staff doubt that the Big Five firm still plans to split off its consulting practice arm in the wake of a failed attempt to sell the unit to Palo Alto, Calif.-based computer maker Hewlett-Packard. Talks between the two firms fell apart in November amid market turmoil. The deal would have valued the consulting unit at about $18 billion.

PwC execs reportedly believe that committing to an internal split, including agreements on how money from a future sale would be distributed among partners and staff, would demonstrate their willingness to carry out the plan and would bolster confidence, helping to stem the firm's high employee turnover rate, which has been near 30 percent, compared to 20 percent at most firms, according to FT.

The firm refused to comment on the matter. "We're not commenting on media speculation and rumors," PwC spokesman David Nestor said.

PwC said last year that it would restructure its business into two or more operating units, letting its audit, business advisory services and tax practice remain as PricewaterhouseCoopers, and developing its management consulting, business process outsourcing, human resource consulting and some corporate finance activities into one or more separate businesses. The firm spun off its human resources consulting practice into a separate unit renamed Unifi last year.

Regulatory pressure from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has repeatedly raised concerns over the independence issues surrounding audit firms that do consulting work, have driven many firms to spin off their consulting arms. After months of heated debate and to the dismay of many members of the accounting community, including some members of the Big Five, the SEC in November passed a rule curbing the amount of consulting work firm can provide their audit clients. (For more stories on the auditor independence rule, click here)

Ernst & Young, the first of the Big Five to divulge its consultancy arm, sold its practice to Paris-based tech consulting outfit Cap Gemini last March. In August, a messy divorce separated Accenture, formerly Andersen Consulting, from its accounting sister, Arthur Andersen, and KPMG plunged into the IPO waters this month with a successful debut on the NASDAQ.

PwC senior partners may have been eyeing an IPO themselves, the FT report said, but the amount of time required to satisfy the requirements of U.S. regulators, and a wait for an audit of this fiscal year's numbers, which ends June 30, that would allow the firm to avoid submitting results to regulators from before the merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand, would push plans for an IPO back toward the end of the year.

-- By Melissa Klein

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