Research On The Information Contents Of Unqualified Audit Opinion With Emphasis Of Matter

Certified public accountants convey the accounting information quality of listed companies to the information users by audit opinion, which is the important basis of information users in decision. Different types of audit opinion represents a different meaning and function, displaying and transmitting the different signal of quality of accounting information of listed companies, and the unqualified audit opinion with emphasis of matter is special. Its premise is that there is no significant misstatement of accounting information of listed companies, but due to the emphasis of matter, it is different from the standard unqualified audit opinion.On November 1, 2010, China promulgated the Chinese CPA professional standards(2010), implemented on January 1, 2012. No. 1503 standard “Emphasis of Matter Paragraphs and Other Matter Paragraphs in the Audit’s Report” has been carried on the substantive revision, by expanded the connotation and scope of emphasis of matter paragraphs. As January 15, 2015, the international auditing and verification standards board(IAASB) completed the reform of the international audit standards, including mandatory using emphasis of matter paragraphs, communicating the key audit matters in the audit report, strengthening the disclosure of continuing operations, etc. So, our country also followed to prepare relevant revisions. It is conceivable that the content of this type of audit opinion will be more and more abundant. Thus, how about the information content of unqualified audit opinion with emphasis of matter now after the implement of the new guidelines? This paper has carried on the related research.First of all, this paper reviewed from two aspects of domestic and foreign literature concerning the information content of audit opinion, and found it is lack of the alone study on unqualified audit opinion with emphasis of matter. With the improvement on the content of emphasis paragraphs, it is worth exploring on the study of whether unqualified audit opinion with emphasis of matter really realizes the value of its decision or not. At the same time, the paper explains the asymmetric information theory, signal display theory and the value relevance theory. Secondly, from the perspective of different information users, this paper analyses the requirements on unqualified audit opinion with emphasis of matter, and sums up the content of emphasis paragraphs which are concerned by different information users. This is prepared for the follow-up questionnaire. Then, based on the years from 2011 to 2014 as the research period, the paper analyses the present situation and problems of disclosure on unqualified audit opinions with emphasis of matter. Then, author designs the questionnaire investigation. It finds that 13 items belong to the important emphasis of matter paragraphs. In addition, comparing the results of questionnaire survey and disclosure of the status quo, it confirms the information contents of unqualified audit opinion with emphasis of matters don’t achieve a higher level. Finally, this paper summarizes four measures to increase the information contents of unqualified audit opinion with emphasis of matters.On the basis of theoretical analysis and the analysis of questionnaire survey, this paper has summarized the above research conclusion in the last part. Then, on the basis of auditing standards reforming, strengthen the CPA follow-up education and professional judgment, it expands the three policy suggestions. At the same time, it puts forward the study limitations and prospects the future research direction.