What Auditors Think about Audit Quality - A New Perspective on an Old Issue

Accounting literature deploys audit quality as a central concept of auditing, yet our appreciation of the construct has not yielded the desired audit. While this construct has been captured by the need to service investors’ decision-making and its role in the efficiency of the capital markets, inputs from much of the performers of audit to the audit quality debate has been minimal. Using survey responses from auditors of their perceptions about audit quality in the auditing industry, this paper rolls back the evolution of audit quality literature to report what those actually doing audits perceive. A conceptual model that specifies auditor characteristics with ex ante and process constraints as a moderator identifies the extent to which auditor’s independence, integrity and objectivity impact the quality of financial statement auditing. The research also finds that process constraints negatively impact the positive effect of auditor’s characteristics on audit quality. Findings from our research show that audit practitioners’ perceptions about factors that determine audit quality must be strongly considered in order to achieve desired audit.