Swedish auditors' view of auditing: Doing things right versus doing the right things

Peter Ohman, Einar Hackner, Anna-Maria Jansson and Finn Tschudi

European Accounting Review, 2006, vol. 15, issue 1, 89-114

Abstract: This paper aims to describe and analyse the thought patterns of Swedish auditors with regard to the way in which they audit information provided by listed companies, and possible changes in their duties. Eighty-two auditors were interviewed using the repertory grid technique and open-ended interview questions. To check the stability in the thought patterns of the respondents, six retests were made and, to validate the findings, an expert panel and two reference groups consisting of auditors and other representatives of the accounting and auditing professions were consulted. Distinct patterns emerged in the mean grid of the thought patterns of all the respondents. One dimension was related to the time perspective, past versus future, and another to auditing practice. Auditors devote a relatively long time and considerable effort to objects that can be satisfactorily verified, but not to objects that they perceive as being of primary importance to investors and other stakeholders. This inconsistency in the thought patterns of the auditors is similar to the gap between auditing in practice and stakeholders' expectations of auditing, which is a phenomenon frequently found in previous research. Moreover, the auditors were very reluctant to make statements about any information except that elicited according to current practice. In addition to this traditional view, the auditors appear to be more concerned about their own situation than that of the parties they are meant to be protecting. Doing things right seems to be more important than doing the right things. That the auditors spend much time on objects that they themselves do not consider to be of primary importance for the investors and other stakeholders, and their unwillingness to change current practice is of great concern in Sweden, where there is a strong belief in self-regulation of the auditing profession.

Date: 2006
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09638180500510475 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:euract:v:15:y:2006:i:1:p:89-114

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REAR20

DOI: 10.1080/09638180500510475

Access Statistics for this article

European Accounting Review is currently edited by Laurence van Lent

More articles in European Accounting Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().