Auditing ASSIGNMENT

Assessment Criteria:

Student work will generally be assessed in terms of the following criteria:

1. Effectiveness of communication - i.e. readability, legibility, grammar, spelling, neatness, completeness and presentation will be a minimum threshold requirement for all written work submitted for assessment. Work that is illegible or incomprehensible and does not meet the minimum requirement will be awarded a fail grade.

2. Demonstrated understanding - This will be evidenced by the student's ability to be dialectical in the discussion of contentious issues.

3. Evidence of research - This will be evidenced by the references made to the statutes, auditing standards, books, journal articles and inclusion of a bibliography.

Question 1- A ‘Profession' or a ‘Trade'

Are accountancy and the accounting profession helped or hindered by the now existing (and increasing) voluminous number of regulatory statutes and accounting standards?

Question 2 - Here are the top 12 things bad auditors do:

1. Impose their own opinions
2. Write findings that are not supported with objective evidence
3. Blindly tick items off checklists, with no thought for what matters
4. Believe the paperwork and ignore what's actually happening on the ground
5. Allow their own prejudices to blind them to what is actually happening
6. Audit against "best practice"; a moving target that's often the auditor's personal opinion
7. Write findings that are gross generalisations, not supported by the facts
8. Feel obliged to find something wrong even if all is well
9. Allow cost-cutting to starve the audit of the time required to do it properly
10. Support managers who set objectives that might be SMRT but aren't Achievable (because the manager has bitten off more than he can chew and can't afford adequate resources)
11. Support managers who set objectives that aren't even SMART
12. Forge a close relationship with managers so that they can write disingenuous audit findings that lead to consultancy business - sometimes at the expense of people's jobs.

SMART: It is often said that objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound

How are these things mitigated by the accounting/auditing profession and regulatory statutes and accounting/auditing standards?