Addressing root causes
In its global survey results report, IFIAR has encouraged audit firms to evaluate and understand the root causes of deficiencies and to take action accordingly. It places high priority on professional scepticism, highlighting this as a significant contributor to the quality of audits, or lack of it.
Audit regulators have already taken steps to identify root causes, as well as engaging audit firms and implementing initiatives to assist the firms’ efforts. Some root causes differ widely between jurisdictions, but others, including human resources and leadership, emerge repeatedly. Lack of leadership and talent attrition, for example, were highlighted by the Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand regulators. Professional scepticism has also emerged as a common theme.
In Singapore, ACRA has identified several broad categories of root causes including structural, organisational and accountability issues related to human resource management. Its current priority is ensuring that senior personnel, such as partners and managers, are adequately involved in audit engagements. It has enhanced its audit inspection programme to take a more targeted, risk-based approach.
‘Singapore has maintained a consistently high quality of audit, although some of the deficiencies observed by IFIAR’s survey feature in our own inspection findings,’ says ACRA chief executive Kenneth Yap. ‘Nevertheless, audit quality is constantly a work in progress.’