A Study On The Relationship Between Non-audit Services And Auditor Independence

The study on the impact between non-audit services (NAS) and auditor independence can be traced back to the seventies of the 20th century. Today, we still haven't draw an unified view in this field. Some scholars think that the certified public accountants (CPA) can strengthen their independence by offering NAS. Some scholars think that it is apt to cause confusion of CPA's role and may build up economic dependence between CPAs and their customers when CPAs offer NAS to their auditing customers, and auditor independence may be weakened. In fact, the revenue percentage in NAS has been increased steadily. NAS has taken the place of audit and become the "leading role"in the business system of CPA. Companied with the development of NAS, the argument has been heated. At the end of 2001, with the collapse of Enron Corp, Arthur Andersen , one of the " big five " accounting companies broke down too. In this background, it is important for us to make research on NAS in the view of theory based on our own situation. This argument includes three parts: The first par is about introduction and theoretical foundation. After introduce the background of this research and the definition of NAS, we make theoretical foundation for ensuing chapters by discussing the development of auditing and NAS, importance of high quality and audit independence. Then we reviewed domestic and international relevant research documents. The Second part is the core of this thesis. It is made up of two chapters. First we discuss the impact of NAS on auditor independence and comment the impact with economics. Then after learning from relevant foreign researches, we make an empirical study on the relationship between NAS and auditor independence of our security market. The last part is about the strategy and supervisory policies in developing NAS in our country in the present stage. Drawing lessons from western main countries'supervisory policies, we point out that we should encourage the development of NAS of accounting firm. We also have put forward the corresponding supervision policy.