The Problems And Countermeasures For Accounting Firms To Conduct Environmental Auditing

With the global warming and climate change, the living environment of human undergo different levels of pollution and destruction. Human activities impact on the earth more and more obviously. Human faces growing pressure of environmental protection. Environmental problems are also more and more concerned by the community. The International Organization of Supreme Audit Institution established Environmental Audit Committee in 1992 to face the increasingly serious environmental problems. China also set up China Council for International Cooperation on Environmental and Development in 1992. Since last mid-80s we began environmental auditing experiment and last mid-90s we began to research environmental auditing theory. Meanwhile, our environmental auditing is government-led and the folk audit development is slow. On the one hand, folk audit should bear the social accountability, on the other hand, it own strong Independence and excellent professionals. Therefore, it is great significant to discuss how Certified Public Accountants to conduct environmental auditing.The research is based on the Certified Public Accountants and enterprise internal staffs'survey research, to understand their opinions and views on implementing the environmental auditing, to analyze whether different industry professionals have different views on environmental auditing, to discuss difficulties and challenges which Certified Public Accountants may encounter while they carry out environmental auditing process, and to explore the relative countermeasures on how to develop an environmental auditing. The formation of the paper is divided into four parts: Firstly, through the research background, significance and methods of analysis, we put forward the innovation and review relevant foreign and domestic research results, in which foreign literature review from the definition and types of environmental audit and so on, domestic literature review from the definition, motivation and status of environmental audit, as well as relevant research of Certified Public Accountants involve in environmental audits. Secondly, through the social accountability theory, sustainable development theory, environmental economics, and the correlation analysis of Certified Public Accountants in environmental audits, we bring forward environmental auditing research hypotheses which is between occupation, industry job experience and the implementation of environmental auditing. Thirdly, we introduce the basis of questionnaire design and hand out 650 questionnaires to accounting firm staffs and internal staffs, recycling 190, of which 172 valid questionnaires. Through item analysis, factor analysis and reliability analysis, we delete the inappropriate variables, extract the common factor and measure the reliability of the questionnaire. Finally, we carried out T test and variance analysis on occupation, industry, and work experience by SPSS17.0, to verify the hypothesis, and the results are as follows:First of all, from the incentive of implementing environmental auditing perspective, low-pollution industry employees'recognition is significantly higher than that of high-pollution industries on the importance and competitiveness of environmental auditing. More than ten years employees'recognition is significantly higher than that of the staff of three to ten years on the importance and competitiveness of environmental auditing. Secondly, the respondents considered most suitable for Regulatory Compliance Audits, followed by Pollution Prevention Audits and Environmental Management Audits. Thirdly, from the obstacles of conducting environmental auditing view, different occupation and industry employees agree that there are many obstacles and difficulties to carry out environmental audits, but there is no significant difference between them.Based on the results of the survey, we put forward recommendations on the audit authority, human resources and other laws and regulations. Audit authority, the relevant departments should adopt legislation to further regulate the scope of the environmental auditing and to clarify the audit privilege for the accounting firm to involve in environmental auditing. Human resources, on the one hand, we should strengthen exchanges and training; on the other hand, we should set up a joint audit working group. Regulatory system, we promote to formulate the environmental auditing which is suitable for Chinese conditions.