The Responsibility Of The Independent Audit Study

1.Motives and Background of ResearchTo meet the demand of reform and open of Chinese economic system, Chinese CPA system was restored in 1980. Chinese CPAs have played a very important role in Chinese market-oriented economic construction for more than twenty years since then. During the first ten years after the restoration, the public had little knowledge about CPAs and their independent auditing, so there was no litigation case related to CPAs and independent auditing responsibility.For Chinese independent auditing field, there is no doubt that 2001 is an important year, in which "HuBeiLiHua", "Shenzhenyuanye", "zhongtianqing" and "supplementary audit" came into view of the public. These events brought out unprecedented trust crisis facing Chinese Certificated Public Accountants. For the trust crisis, CPAs are liable to attribute it to outer environment, while the public tends to attribute it to the current inappropriate auditing responsibility system. Between CPAs and the public does there exist big gap concerning whether current auditing responsibility is too heavy or not. So the paper attempts to thoroughly make a theoretical review to independent auditing responsibility and analyzes several controversial topics such as truth and legality of audit reports and authority of independent auditing standards so as to contribute to establishing a reasonable and effective independent auditing responsibility system.2.Framework and Main PointsThe paper consists of a preface and four chapters. In the paper, the author firstly recollects history of Chinese independent auditing and analyzes the current trust crisis facing CPAs; then establishes an auditing theoretical structure which is based on auditing environment, makes atheoretical review for auditing responsibility in the auditing theoretical structure and defines relationships between auditing responsibility and other auditing theoretical elements; next discusses several typical standpoints about auditing nature and defines auditing responsibility, auditing professional obligation and auditing legal liability under auditing contract theory; at last analyzes several controversial questions related to auditing responsibility and put forward my own idea about them.3.Main ContentThe preface recollects the history and status quo of independent auditing in China and other countries, mentions the unprecedented trust crisis facing CPAs and different responses to the crisis from in and out of the profession. Then the author lists a few questions that will be discussed and solved in the following parts of the paper.The first chapter deals with auditing responsibility in the auditing theoretical structure that is based on auditing environment. Firstly an auditing theoretical structure is defines as a framework of auditing theory, which includes main theory elements and their logical connections among the theory elements. Then the author creates an auditing theoretical structure that is based on auditing environment and consists of auditing environment, auditing objective, auditing assumption, auditing nature, auditing procedure, auditing standard and auditing responsibility. In the end the chapter probes the inner connections between auditing responsibility and auditing environment, auditing objective, auditing assumption, auditing nature, auditing procedure and auditing standard.The second chapter focuses on several concepts related to auditing responsibility, including independent auditing, auditing responsibility, auditing professional obligation and auditing legal liability. First the chapter discusses meanings of auditing responsibility under information theory, trustee theory and insurance theory and defines independent auditing as a series of contracts between CPAs and the public with a viewto getting a good understanding of auditing responsibility; Then defines auditing responsibility, auditing professional obligation and auditing legal liability under auditing contract theory; at last discusses relationships between auditin...