New Study Reveals 55% of Public Believe Auditors’ could Prevent Company failures’

As per a recent survey conducted by the ACCA, 55% of the respondents expressed that auditors are the ones who are responsible for helping companies avoid failures. 70% of the participants of the survey said that the role of audit and auditors should evolve in such a way that it helps in preventing company failures.

ACCA recently conducted a survey in which 11,000 individuals from 11 countries participated and revealed their expectations that role of audit as well as auditors should evolve to prevent company failures.  

When respondents were asked to best describe an auditor’s role, only 48% of the Greek participants were able to correctly define it. The Greeks were then followed by respondents from the Czech Republic with 47%. Only 25% of UK participants were able to answer correctly.

The survey has been conducted at a time when the audit sector of the UK is undergoing a period in which it is receiving unprecedented reviews due to a discovery of a number of high profile audit scandals involving some of the big name corporations.  

Executive director – governance at ACCA, Maggie McGhee has said that profession has long spoken on the existence of an expectation gap with regards to audit. The survey cleared one thing and that is the need to educate the public more regarding the role of an auditor, through profession adopting an approach which is proactive in nature in order to address the concerns of the public.

Antonis Diolas, business law and audit manager said that considering the expectation gap in audit it is the need of the time to have open dialogue between the profession, all the stakeholders and the public to understand as well as decide on what the public expects from audit and auditors going forward.
The study was conducted in Australia, Czech Republic, Canada, Greece, Malaysia, New Zealand, Netherlands, South Africa, Singapore, UK and UAE.