The more auditors try to bridge the proverbial ‘ expectation gap’, it’s noted with a lot of despair the expectation by audit committees is widening. Managing expectation gaps between the audit committee and external auditors is crucial to maintaining a productive and effective audit process. How to bridge those gaps? Is it impossible?  1. How much Communication and Education is enough?  I’ve…

Value of Audit – use of data and analytics

Use of big data and deeper analytics can help auditors better understand their clients’ environment and use exception reporting to improve audit quality and detect fraud. The benefits of big data and analytics are; allowing the testing of larger populations as samples, supporting better identification of high risk audit areas, and bringing value to companies through the benchmarking…

Value of Audit – Open and Transparent Audit Committee

Businesses are facing many disruptive forces arising from technology, innovation, globalisation and geopolitical turbulence and these forces are shaping a risk and regulatory landscape that is challenging boards of directors. Understanding the impact of such forces is equally important to the audit committee and the auditor to improve the value generated by an audit. 

By and large, we see audit…

Value of Audit – Beyond the statutory audit scope.

Regulatory reforms and regulatory interventions have influenced a more deeply-engaged oversight by the audit committee. This has led to continual improvements in the audit process and the auditing profession, and audit quality has continued to improve. 

In order to reduce the expectation gap auditors have been engaging boards and audit committees by bringing a wider perspective to the…

Value of Audit -Expanded report and significant risks

As expectations of audit grow due to the many scandals around the world, auditing process has to change like any product or service. Everything has improved and undergone significant change in the last century, whether it be cars, planes, computers and phones or medical procedures, engineering, software and robotics. But, auditing profession has not changed dramatically to the point of…

Does an Audit contribute to Better Governance

Audits are part of the governance process in companies. However, no governance system, however well designed, will fully prevent greedy, dishonest people from putting their personal interests ahead of the interests of the companies they manage. Frauds can be covered up by withholding information or fraudsters using low quality auditors to perpetrate and perpetuate fraudulent practices. Therefore,…