It is also important to note that separation of ownership and control offers the potential for conflicts of information (see Chapter 3 for further discussion). A company’s management has access to, and controls, all of the information regarding the company. It generally decides what information might be of interest to the owners. As a result, the information at the disposal of the owners may not be as complete as the management’s. Since the goals of the management may not be completely congruent with those of the owners, there is good reason to suspect that the manager will not always act in the best interests of the owner, as Jensen and Meckling observed (1976). The demand for verification (and attestation) of financial statements arises because otherwise managers might have an incentive to misrepresent the financial situation. This might arise because the owners of enterprises use financial reports to evaluate the management’s performance.
In modern capital markets characterized by the creation of highly sophisticated financial instruments, conflicts of interest may lead managers to manipulate the financial statements at the expense of a company’s shareholders. In such circumstances, the role of the auditors becomes decisive because they increasingly need to provide investors with the assurance that financial statements conform to recognized accounting criteria. In this regard, auditing may be demanded firstly if the audit report can be used to ‘help’ motivate truthful reporting and secondly if it produces information that will assist potential users (e.g. investors or bankers) in valuing the company. In such circumstances it is inevitable that the role of the auditor can also be considered as a sharer of risk with the users of financial statements, principally the company’s shareholders.