The Issues Of Professional Competence Of Environmental Auditor In China

In recent years, environmental issues are put on the agenda and become the common concern of the public. Stakeholders request firms minimize their harmful effect on environment. In addition, they want to check whether the disclosure of enterprise environment is fine. On the other hand, companies need others to evaluate the achievement they make to protect the environment. Under this circumstance, environmental auditing emerges. As a branch of auditing, environmental audit is broader and more complex than traditional financial statement audit. Now environmental audit develops slowly in our country, which owes largely to the lack of competent environmental auditor. At present, some accounting firms in our country have gradually carried out environmental auditing. However, CPA’s lacking of professional competence on environmental auditing largely hinders the effective implementation of environmental audit work. To solve this dilemma, the paper adopts normative research methods and discusses issues of our environmental auditor’s professional competence based on research results home and abroad.According to the Chinese certified public accountants competence guide, professional competence of our country’s CPA is mainly composed of professional knowledge, professional skills, professional ethics and attitude, and practice experience. Therefore, this article analyzes the existing problems and reasons of CPA’s professional competence when implementing environmental auditing in the four aspects. Because most of current CPA do not have systematic environment audit education and training, they have only financial, accounting, auditing and other financial professional knowledge, lacking of environmental science, environmental engineering, sociology or other related knowledge. Their knowledge structure is relatively single, environmental audit skill level is not high. At the same time, the lack of environment auditor qualification certification system leads no guarantee that the CPA has related knowledge and skills. Professional ethics, as a code of ethics, is not mandatory, so sometimes it can not play a role and must rely on the powerful law. However, the current legal responsibility system is not sound and CPA’s illegal economic benefits are far greater than costs, which eventually lead to the phenomenon of "bad money after bad money". Environmental audit in China started late, the theory and practice develop relatively slow and related environmental auditing standards are not perfect. In order to avoid environmental audit risk and responsibility, the CPA rarely actively participate in the environment audit services, so their practical experience is very scarce.Canada is one of the early countries which successfully implemented environmental auditing, which owes largely to its emphasis on environmental auditor’s professional competence. CEAB formulated the environmental auditor qualification application guidelines, review finally for eligible candidate qualifications, supervise certification process to ensure that environmental auditor abide by professional ethics; CICA regularly issue environmental accounting and audit guidance document, providing powerful intellectual support to the environmental auditor; Canada specifically set up an independent environmental auditor team which is managed and trained by CEAA. From Canada’s measures on environmental auditor, we can see that education, examination and experience all play an important role in cultivating competence and they should be relatively set according to the reasonable professional development and the demand.At the same time, a scientific and effective monitor and evaluation mechanism should be established to ensure the professional competence of auditors. In addition, the auditors themselves should adapt to changes of the environment, constantly study and research according to the demand of the society, maintain and improve their professional competence.The most important method to improve environment auditor’s professional competence is to strengthen education and training. In degree education stage, it is suggested that environmental auditing academic education system could be established in the training objectives, curriculum setting, teaching means and methods. In the subsequent stage, the content of environmental audit should be added to education and training. In order to provide a clear direction for the self development and education, ensure that environmental auditor have due qualifications, environment auditor competence framework and strict environmental auditor qualification certification system should be set. In the regulation of auditors, government’s administrative supervision and certified public accountants industry self-discipline supervision should be combination, perfect the system of legal liability and strictly punish the violation of professional ethics. Besides, an industry organization as environmental auditor association could be specially set up to strengthen supervision. Finally, we can motivate the implementation of environmental audit services by improving standards related with environmental audit, so as to enhance practice of environmental auditor.