The Expanding Role of the Auditor in Sustainability Reporting

Running head: AUDITING AND ASSURANCE
Auditing and Assurance
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:
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1AUDITING AND ASSURANCE
Table of Contents
Question 1: The expanding role of the auditor...........................................................................2
Requirement 3:.......................................................................................................................2
Requirement 4:.......................................................................................................................2
Question 2: Auditor independence.............................................................................................3
1. Potential independence threats:..........................................................................................3
2. Ways of eliminating threats:..............................................................................................4
3. Recommendation:..............................................................................................................5
References:.................................................................................................................................6

2AUDITING AND ASSURANCE
Question 1: The expanding role of the auditor
Requirement 3:
Sustainability reports are those reports that business organisations publish to provide
information about their economic, social and environmental effects caused by daily business
activities (Globalreporting.org, 2019). The use of these reports has increased for both public
and private organisations in the past few years. One crucial concept in sustainability reporting
is stakeholders that include anyone currently in business relationship with the organisation or
using its products. Although organisations restrict their reporting to suppliers, investors,
staffs, customers, governments and neighbours having stakes, issues like greenhouse gas
emissions have impact beyond those parties. Another issue is materiality, in which many
sustainability reports explain the process of determination of material aspects generally not in
a quantitative manner.
In Australia, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines have been commonly
used for sustainability reporting. These guidelines are comprehensive with 150 various
disclosures needed for full adherence (Simnett & Huggins, 2015). Some organisations list all
such disclosures along with stating the reason behind omitting any such disclosure. In
addition, there have been a number of sustainability reports that consist of independent
assurance reports. Such reports generally provide adverse assurance on all or parts of the
sustainability reports. Some reports are extremely specific, while others are general in nature
(Amran, Lee & Devi, 2014).
Requirement 4:
Different listed organisations in Australia have adopted sustainability reporting and
there are a number of audit firms that provided assurance services on those reports. Two such
organisations are described briefly as follows:
Rio Tinto:
The audit firm responsible to provide sustainability reporting and assurance report to
Rio Tinto is PwC. For providing the assurance report, PwC has focused on certain risk areas
like greenhouse gas emissions, water management, energy use, safety and others. PwC has
clearly mentioned that it did not find any evidence based on which it could be stated that the
sustainability reporting of Rio Tinto has not been prepared in accordance with the GRI