Puzzle

Abstract

A continuing puzzle, in any case to me, is why most observers, regulators, journalists, academics, and indeed often audit practitioners as well, consider statutory corporate auditing to be in trouble; deep trouble. To these observers, statutory auditing has major quality problems and statutory audit failures are a major problem. These concerns exist in the Netherlands and in most advanced economies. In fact, the only country that appears to be unaffected is Belgium. In Belgium statutory auditing is seen to do just fine. I live in Belgium. The puzzle surfaced again during the first FAR Conference that this MAB issue is devoted to. The point I will make here is that, in effect, the Belgians see this mostly correctly: corporate statutory auditing in the world is doing fine most of the time. Audit quality is a very worthy object of research and attention, but not because of an audit quality crisis.