Expectation Gap and Auditing

人们期望外部审计师在审计过程中能发现管理层的舞弊行为。然而，外部审计员没有达到他们的期望。人们的期望与审计人员的工作之间的差距越来越大。每当大公司的丑闻被揭露时，人们都要求加强审计。在日本，公司法和审计准则已经修订，以缩小差距。也就是说，差距是会计准则和会计理论的一种车轮。同时，人们也逐渐认识到传统会计理论与新会计理论以及审计理论在未来审计前景、外部审计人员的名册、审计制度等方面存在着重大差距。本研究项目的最重要目的是调查日经500大公司的管理层和注册会计师对外部审计人员名册的看法，审计条例及其体制框架。另一个目的是了解差距对审计方法、审计准则修订和审计定义的影响。

What people expect external auditors to do in their auditing process is to find frauds of managements. However, external auditors do not measure up to their expectations. The gap between people's expectation and what auditors do has been increased. Whenever scandals of big companies are revealed, people address to reinforce auditing. In Japan, company law and standards of auditing has been revised to decrease gap. In other words, the gap is a kind wheel of accounting standards and theories. At the same, people come to understand that other significant gap exists between traditional accounting theories and new ones as well as auditing in the respect of prospects for the future auditing, roll of external auditors, auditing system and so on.The most important objectives of this research project is to survey the opinions of management of Nikkei big 500 companies and certified public accountant about the roll of external auditing, regulations for auditing and its institutional framework. The other objectives are to make sense of the influences of the gap on auditing methods, the revision of auditing standards and definition of auditing.