HA3032 Auditing and Assurance Services- Several Dimensions

a. To what extent did the group assignment content and personal experience of completing the assignment in a group increase your understanding about the practice of auditing and assurance? and,

 

b. To what extent did undertaking the group assignment assist in enhancing your self-development with regards to lifelong learning?

f the assignment. One of the major reasons of working together in a group is that it helps to motivate the group members to achieve the desired result. At the time of working together in the group, we used to motivate and encourage each other so that the assignment can be done in an effective way. As per my learning experience, after the completion of my group assignment, I have come to know that how to make strong bonding among the team members. It is needed for any group assignment to welcome the opinions of the team members. In this way, all the group members feel the part of the group. One of my major learning outcomes of this assignment is that it has increased my analytical as well as research power. Apart from all these personal experiences, this assignment has provided me a deep insight on the auditing process of big or a large amount of data. I have come to know that the auditors of the organizations play a significant part in the process of large amount of data analysis. I have also come to know that the effective analysis of big data of the business organizations helps to increase the productivity of the organization along with cost saving.  In this regard, the auditing process of big data takes fewer amounts of time. In addition, this is much cheaper than other audit programs.

b. The undertaking of the current assignment has helped me to enhance the process of my self-development. After the development of this particular project, I have to come to some personal conclusion that will help me in future in long-term basis. In order to do any kind of assignment, the first criterion is to research on the topic. The detailed research on the particular topic is essential to obtain valuable data and information. After the completion of the assignment, I have developed the opinion that coordination among the team members is must in order to achieve the aim of the team. There must be a bonding of trusts among the all team members. After that, I have learned that the critical evaluation is needed on the assignment topics. The process of critical evaluation helps to establish the logical connection. These are the personal opinions that I shall use in long-term basis.

2. Several issues can be seen in the practice of auditing in recent years. Proper research is needed on these issues in the near future so that the process of auditing can be benefitted from it. One such issue is the responsibility of the auditors to detect fraud in the financial report of the business organizations and to maintain the process of auditor’s independence (Thibodeau and Freier 2014). Various kinds of accounting and financial frauds can be seen in the financial statements of the business organizations due to the lack of effective internal control. One just cannot ignore the fact that this is a major risk of the business organizations. The honesty and integrity of management is in stake due to this risk (Sharma and Panigrahi 2013). The auditors have a significant role to play in this process. The main research objective in this regard will be to discover the ways by which the auditors can minimize the fraud risks in the financial statements of the organizations. Another important issue in this regard is the threat of auditor’s independence. As per the principles of auditor’s principles, the auditors should be independent from any kind of financial and non-financial interest of the audited clients (Tepalagul and Lin 2015). In this era, there are several instances where the auditors have been found enjoying financial and non-financial services from the audited firms. This process creates the threat of auditor’s independence. These two auditing issues can be the topic of future research in the auditing process. By taking into consideration of these two topics, the audit process could be beneficial from several ways. The research process on these two topics will be helpful to minimize the loopholes in the audit process. Currently, APES 110 contains all the principles, standards and safeguards of the threat of auditor’s independence (Blay and Geiger 2013). Potential changes can be made in the current standards to diminish the threats of financial frauds and auditor’s independence. Moreover, suitable results of the future research process will help the audit profession to gain trusts of the users of the financial statements.

References

Blay, A.D. and Geiger, M.A., 2013. Auditor fees and auditor independence: Evidence from going concern reporting decisions. Contemporary Accounting Research, 30(2), pp.579-606.

Sharma, A. and Panigrahi, P.K., 2013. A review of financial accounting fraud detection based on data mining techniques. arXiv preprint arXiv:1309.3944.

Tepalagul, N. and Lin, L., 2015. Auditor independence and audit quality: A literature review. Journal of Accounting, Auditing & Finance, 30(1), pp.101-121.

Thibodeau, J.C. and Freier, D., 2014. Auditing and accounting cases: Investigating issues of fraud and professional ethics. McGraw-Hill, a business unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Incorporated.