An Evaluation Of Audit Expectation Gap: Issues And Challenges

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the issues and challenges of audit
expectation gap. The "audit expectation gap" is the difference between what the public and users of financial statements perceive the role of an audit to be, and what the audit profession claims is expected of them during the audit. However, the expectation gap is as a result of the probabilistic nature of auditing, ignorance, naivety and unreasonable expectations of the society, the evolutionary development of audit responsibilities which create response time lags to changing expectations, corporate financial crisis and accountability requirements, contradiction between minimal government regulation of the profession, lack of technical competence, timeliness and relevance of auditor communication, lack of assurance-provider
independence, the low commitment to the public interest of the law etc. These causes can be reduced through defensive and constructive approaches. The study adopted the normative descriptive approach in the analysis of data. It was found that the audit expectation gap is a very fundamental issue in every society in the world and that perception of users of financial statements as the responsibilities of auditors and the audit objective is the major cause of the gap. Therefore, better communication between the auditors and the society may help reduce the gap, which depends on the design and implementation of appropriate models by the
profession to eliminate the gap completely.