Auditing & assurance services : a systematic approach, 10th ed.

Abstract

The pace of change in the financial statement auditing environment continues to accelerate, even as the need for reliable, high-quality assurance over financial reporting continues to intensify. The auditing environment is far more complex and dynamic today than it was even 10 years ago. Today, for example, financial statement auditors practice in a regulated environment and must deal with three sets of auditing standards: the standards of the PCAOB for audits of U.S. public companies, the standards of the AICPA’s Auditing Standards Board for audits of essentially all other U.S. entities (e.g., private companies, government entities, universities), and the standards of the IFAC’s International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board for audits of entities based outside of the United States. And those standards have undergone change at an unprecedented pace, with few signs of slowing. It is difficult enough for us as professors to stay abreast of the unprecedented change and complexity in the auditing environment; it is simply unrealistic to expect our students to be able to grasp all of this while they are working diligently just to learn the fundamentals of financial statement auditing.