The Importance Of Auditing

Auditing has been basically seen as a ‘social phenomenon' since its purposes remain continuously being change, dependent on the scale of interconnection among the audit profession and the public (Flint, 1988; Power, 1997; Sikka et al., 1998). From one viewpoint, the audit profession seeks to certify that auditing is viewed as important to the changing needs of the public through the progression of the audit function. Flint (1988), Power (1994; 2000), Epstein and Geiger (1994) and Petland (2000), for instance, maintain that, this development was in effect to a professed need of the society who look for information or assurance about the behavior of others. Researchers such as Fogarty et al. (1991), Sikka (1992; 2002), Humphrey et al. (1993),

Humphrey et al. (1993) and Porter and Gowthorpe (2004), for instance, have contended the gap exists because of an insufficiency in an auditor’s performance and auditing standards. Pierce and Kilcommins (1996), Boyd et al., (2001) and; McEnroe and Martens (2001), argue that the gap exists because of misinterpretations and misconception of the meaning of auditing by the users. These studies recommend that the users do not comprehend the audit functions and the role of auditors. Thus, they have impractical expectations of auditors. Previous research led by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA, 1988) and Porter (1993) established the deficient execution, defective measures and unreasonable demands as the components of the audit prospects gap. However, a recent empirical study conducted by Porter and Gowthorpe has shown that these components have transmuted over time albeit the perceptions of pessimism as to the audit functions have not been eliminated. As agreed by most researchers, the audit expectations gap centres on several issues. The most notable are: the auditor’s roles and responsibilities (Porter, 1993; Fazdly and Ahmad, 2004; Dixon et al., 2006), the nature and meaning of audit report messages (Monroe and Woodliff, 1994; Gay et al., 1998) and audit independence (Sweeney, 1997; Lin and Chen, 2004; Alleyne et al., 2006). Humphrey (1997) classified the issues

This is still a debatable issue because such standards may not suit to the desiderata of developing countries. Furthermore, the possibility of fraud, graft and economic malfeasance are high in the public sector in developing countries (Kaufmann, 1997; Gray and Kaufmann, 1998; Sandholtz and Koetzle, 2000). In this deference, it’s possible to argue that there could be more insistence from the intrigued parties, such as global financing agencies and politicians, on auditors to perform the roles which may be outside the scope of the audit jurisdiction.
Though audit expectation gap has been empirically established to exist in Ghana (Onumah et al., 2009; Agyei et al., 2013) just like other studies elsewhere, it appears no Ghanaian study (based on information available to the researcher) has been able to investigate the audit expectation gap among public universities in Ghana. Therefore, the objective of this study is to contribute to this call by being one of the few that have taken that audacious step in filling this