Audit Expectation Gap between Auditors and Users of Financial Statements

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the variable(s) that is/are base of audit expectation gap between auditors and users of financial statement which includes bankers (treasury fund managers) and investors (individual as well as corporate). The variables used are Audit reliability, Audit responsibility and Usefulness of audited financial statements. The data was collected through questionnaire which was distributed in sample size n=300 at random consisting of 100 subjects from each of three groups and n=259 questionnaire was received back. The questionnaire consists of two sections, first section collected demographic data and other section enclosed 16 semantic differential belief statements. The statistical technique “Independent sample t-test” was performed in order to recognize the variable(s) that is/are base of audit expectation gap. This study finds that the gap is existed between auditor and investor in two variables which are Reliability and Usefulness of audited financial statement. The reason behind this gap is lack of proper education and understanding regarding audit standards and audit practices so this gap will be reduce by giving adequate knowledge and awareness of audit to the users of financial statements.

Keywords: audit expectation gap; audit reliability; audit responsibility; usefulness of audited financial statement