Relevance of Audit for Users and Independence of Auditor

This report critically evaluates the relevance of audit for users and comments on the independence of auditor and auditing party. It discusses the importance of auditing, duties of companies, roles and responsibilities of auditors, and the ill effects of misreporting the audit report to the company. The report also highlights the threats to the interest of government and shareholders due to misstatement by auditors in their reports.

International Audit
and Assurance

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
TASK ..............................................................................................................................................3
Critically evaluate the relevance of audit for the users and comment on the independence of
auditor and auditing party...........................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Auditing can be defined as a process of ensuring that company is following all the legal
and statutory requirements. From the point view of accountancy, it is an inspection that business
is maintaining al its accounts according to the rules and regulations provided in the law. They
perform this duty to make sure that all the financial books are up to date and correctly recorded
as per their knowledge. It helps the users of accounting reports to make their decisions by
trusting on the auditors of that reports, that these trusted persons must have performed their
duties correctly (Anbuchelian, Sowmya and Ramesh, 2019). This report is based on evaluation of
case study where comments is required to be evaluated.
TASK
Critically evaluate the relevance of audit for the users and comment on the independence of
auditor and auditing party.
Audit failures means issuing a financial statement of a company to be correct even when
it comprises of number of frauds or errors, either intentionally or unknowingly. It can be due to
any reason such as improper training, failing to exhibit professionalism while conducting
investigation, improper estimates of values or inadequate creation of audit documentation. Apart
from these, there is a most common type of audit fraud which is taking place, amid of the
relations of the auditor and the company of which auditing is been taking place. In this scenario,
the whole process of auditing is conducted from the point view of the company while ignoring
the interest of financial statements users, accounting authenticity and the duty of auditor. The
reports presented in the influence of the party on which the examination is conducted, is not
accurate and shows all the aspects as positive only (Khelil, Khlif and Amara, 2021).
Another cause, is the greed of auditor. This is common that the firm tries to give money
to the audit inspector, so that it can present the business as financially good and all the processes
are being performed correctly as per the rules and regulations. All these practices not only
hampers the interest of the external users of the financial reports but also the business itself.
Auditing refers to the checking and reporting the fairness shown by business in its
financial statements. It evaluates that firm has all the proofs for the transaction recorded by it. It
also investigates that there is no immaterial information in it along with analysing that the firm is
not hiding any data form the auditing person and the shareholders. In big firms, only those

reports that are evaluated by auditor is considered to be correct and all the decision making takes
place according to that only.
Importance of Auditing
 Verifies Accuracy – Through auditing, companies tries to check that whether all its
accounts are been recorded correctly or not. It helps them in detecting all kinds of frauds
that could have taken place while recording transactions. It detects the fraud committed
by accountants (Weirich, Pearson and Churyk, 2020).
 Detects errors- Auditing helps in checking out that all the information has been recorded
in the books of accounts. This assists the firm in uncovering all that facts that might have
been missed by accountants while maintaining records.
 Presenting true financial position- Auditing makes sure that users of financial accounts
are provided with fair picture of company without hiding any material and relevant data.
They detect all the weaknesses of the financial statements and helps in framing accurate
accounts.
There are some duties of companies which they are required to follow for providing full
information to the stakeholders.
Duties of company with context to disclosure of financial statements
It is the responsibility of firms to provide all the necessary and relevant information to its
users of financial accounts. They have to reveal all the data that can impact the decision making
process of the investors, government and various parties dealing with the company. It is also
mandatory for the directors to mention the personal interest of directors in the company, along
with the interest on capital received by them. All the schemes ran by business whether related to
organisation or to the directors or partners of company must also be mentioned in the notes of
financial statements (Wu and et. al., 2019).
Corporation should also disclose the manner in which it is adhering to the principles of
codes of corporate governance in UK. For which they have to exhibit the rule of Comply or
Explain for all the provisions. It is mandatory that the company do not alter any value, for hiding
any information from its shareholders. The annual report filed with stock exchange must be
properly audited by the internal as well as external auditors. It is also the duty of director of
company to avail all the required information to the investigating party.

Failing to comply with all these obligations, the person liable for this misstatement is
identified and is convicted to a fine. In case the director is not able to adhere with its role of
providing all data to the auditor than it is considered as guilty. This person is indicted for either
imprisonment for maximum five years or with fine or both.
Roles and Responsibility of Auditor while investigating financial reports
It is the prime duty of an auditor to check all the accounting books and records
thoroughly, so as to detect all kinds of frauds occurring in them. It is not allowed to prevent the
frauds of firm by hiding them or altering the values. It is the responsibility of examiner to
identify weaknesses in accounting system of client and reveal any type of fraud committed by
business in its audit report. Along with this, they also has to check for errors in records. On the
whole, there duty is to express their opinion that whether the financial statements are true and
fair or not. In addition to this, it is also the responsibility of auditor that it does not reveal any
confidential information of the company to its competitors or in the market (Gibert and et. al.,
2021).
There are two types of auditor in companies. Internal auditors are the part of firm. They
control and check the complete record keeping system of organisation on daily basis. They
manages the risk of company effectively from the financial perspective. It is very important for
a company to conduct internal audit.
Relevance of conducting auditing internally
 Assessing risk – Auditors check that whether the records of the company are accurate or
not. All the processes of account keeping are according to the rules and there is no
fraudulent activity in business.
 Monitors upcoming risks – It is the duty of internal auditor to check that what types of
risks can arise in future and whether the business is ready to take them or not. Through
this, they can make the firm ready for the coming situations (Lessambo, Lessambo and
Weis, 2018).
 Attaining organisational goals – Conducting auditing internally helps in checking that
the company always follows all the rules, regulations and policies so that any illegal
activity cannot come in their of achieving their target. This helps in ensuring that all the
procedure in the organisation are being handled legally.

 Cost control management – Internal auditors assists the management in detecting any
kind of fraudulent activity in business. It checks the authenticity of accounts and records
so that the true picture of business can be obtained.
So, it is very important for the companies to conduct internal audit in companies so that it
can help the company from preventing all kinds of frauds.
The other one are external. The report made by these auditors matters a lot for the users
of financial statements. It is important to note that the person or group who is handing this
evaluation, is not a linked with the company on which audit procedure is been conducted
(Canning, Gendron and O'Dwyer, 2018).
Independence and Integrity of Auditors
The person or company who is conducting the audit should not have any interest in the
client company. Audit must be independent. This means that auditor should not hold any shares
of the firm, neither it should have any type of decision taking rights associated to that business.
The auditor is expected to carry its work freely and in accordance with rules. This also involves
the case of corruption, in which client tries to bribe the investigator and urges to show good
results and hide the shortcomings of company. This is against the norms of auditing and the
auditor must also mention it in its audit report. In case, the auditor is found to have any interest
or accepting bribe, then that audit is considered to be void and the auditing party and client both
have to face consequences linked to that.
It is the most common practice in UK, now a days, where companies offer money to the
auditing firms, so that company can show its financial position to be good. They tries to hide its
actual position to maintain or improve its reputation in market. Many companies also bribe the
auditors to hide their illegal businesses handled by them. But they all negatively impact the
company as well the various external users of financial statements (Al-Attar, 2017).
Ill effects of misreporting the audit report to the company.
 Inaccurate future decisions- By presenting wrong position, companies have to maintain
its position further in market. For this, it may happen that it has to take some decisions
that are not actually good for the business, but has to be made according to the decision
the position showed by them. This can prove more harmful to business. For example, a
company altered its audited financial report by showing good profits and adequate cash
availability. As per this, they had to announce good dividend on shares, in a situation

when the firm was facing a huge loss. This made the company to ask for more loan from
bank to pat dividends.
 Ignorant to critical problems- The practice of giving wrong information on audited
reports make the firm lenient towards the problems. They start adapting a flexible
behaviour for even those situations that demands special attention. There are also many
problems about which they might came to know, if proper audit would have taken place.
Thus, it diverts the focus of management from key areas.
Hampers the interests of shareholders
Whenever a firm is identified, that a particular firm has presented wrong financial report,
or its members are involved in any fraudulent activity, then the auditor of the company along
with the management team comes under scrutiny (Wertheim, 2019).
The decisions of investment in the company is dependent on the picture of the business
framed by auditor in its report. If the statement says that the firm is earning enough money even
when, it is great losses, then it will affect the shareholder negatively. The investing person would
have to face losses as the business is not earning profits. For instance, a firm filed a misstated
audited financial statement with large amounts of profits. According to this report, they also
announced a handsome dividend on the shares, which they actually did not pay. Looking at the
announcement of dividend, other people got attracted towards it and invested their money in
company. But the next year, the company showed losses with great extent. This made the new
investors shocked as they were expecting high profits. So, this is a kind of fraud committed by
both the company and the auditor (Brierley and Gwilliam, 2017).
Threat to the interest of government
The government is interested in the financial statements from the point of view that
whether the business is following all the rules and regulations while recording its transactions or
not. They also wants to know that whether the organisation is paying all its taxes or not. But the
practice of presenting wrong audit report is like a threat to the needs of government. In wrong
audit report, it tries to show that the company is adapting all the norms of corporate governance
and also provides wrong explanation of the rules, it is not following. This delivered wrong
information to the administration that there is no illegal activity being taking place in company.
It also directly or indirectly affects the external parties as the illegal act can be harmful for the
users of the product or financial statement. For instance, the corporation showed that the carbon

emission taking place in its factory is in the limit provided by government, which was not true.
This is a type of fraud with government as the company had to pay charges for over emissions,
which they avoided and also it effects the health of citizens living near by, which is against
corporate social responsibility.
Also, companies tries to show less profits in their audited reports, with a view to evade
themselves from heavy taxation. This is also cheating with the government as it is interested in
the tax amount paid by companies. This tax is further used for the welfare of citizens. So, it is
fraud committed by business and auditor jointly with government as well as the people of
country (Brown, Baldwin and Sangster, 2019).
Misstatement by auditor in its report affects the users decision very heavily. All these acts
of misstatement and fraud are subject to penalty of fine, imprisonment and sometimes to the
cancellation of authority to conduct audit
There are few instances that took place in UK in recent past. In year 2017, EY auditing
firm was penalised by around £ 2.2 millions for not properly examining the Stagecoach bosses.
Partner of EY was also charged with fine of £ 100000 for not analysing the financial statements
thoroughly. Though the partners claimed that the act was not intentional, but still there were
many instances where the auditors could not provide sufficient evidences of auditing. The
company was further under investigation for many other firms which were collapsed or failed
due to failure in audit by EY (The Guardian, 2021).
The four big incidents took in global blue chip companies which collapsed the companies
were linked to audit failure only. These businesses were EY, Deloitte, KPMG, Pwc.
For Eliminating such types of cases form UK, government has asked the directors of
firms to state every in their report that what steps have been taken by them to prevent and detect
any type of fraud which have been or might be attempted by the auditor. This would help the
company in checking the procedure of audit and generating information about the accuracy of
accounts. The cases that happened in UK also made the image of auditors to be sceptical and
suspicious which means that the companies will themselves be taking a strict review on the
results driven by the external auditor, so that it does not have to face legal of financial
consequences later on.
There is also a need to make amendments in the definition of detect and prevent. They
have to specify that what is demanded from the auditors. The meaning of fraud and materiality

should be specified more deeply, so that auditors can understand what is counted as fraud and
what not. It will help internal auditors to conduct their audit with more specialization and
accuracy (El Nashar, 2020).
More than all the above points, the major aspect which is required to be attended is the
money earning goal of auditors. They have to understand that their motive of earning profit
hampers the interests of stakeholders. Government must take appropriate action to check the
workings of all external auditors so that they does not remain any space for corruption in this
field.
CONCLUSION
From the above analysis, it can be concluded that, there is a huge need of reviewing the
audit procedure of UK. The government must take corrective actions to regulate this practice, so
that the frauds can be eliminated from the environment. The companies as well as the auditors
must be strictly warned against the presentation of misstated reports. Their must be some
penalties for auditors, if they presented wrong reports or examined any firm in which they have
their personal interest. Also, there is a need of adherence to provisions of taking and accepting
bribe in this field. All the parties - business and auditor along with government has to
understand that the financial reports are very important for the external users. These stakeholders
has to take their decisions on the basis of these reports only and misrepresentation in these
affects this process of making choice. On the whole, this is the need of hour for the UK
government, to take some strict action immediately.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
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Applied Expert Systems (pp. 27-1). CRC Press.
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Gibert, D. and et. al., 2021. Auditing static machine learning anti-Malware tools against
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Palgrave Macmillan.
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Wertheim, S., 2019. Auditing for cybersecurity risk. The CPA Journal. 89(6). pp.68-71.
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