Auditor’s Public Interest Responsibilities And Audit Quality: Importance Of Accurate Financial Reporting Essay.

In a recent interview with ABC news, the now former Chairman of the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) Greg Medcraft warned that:

“We don't want to have another Enron. And the key to not having another Enron is making sure auditors do their job and to get assurance that financials are free of material misstatement" 

Enron was an energy, commodities, and services company based in Texas, USA. It was founded in 1985. Prior to its bankruptcy on 3^rd December, 2001, Enron employed close to 30,000 staff and was a significant electricity, natural gas and communications company, which had reported revenue of nearly US$101 billion during the year 2000.

By the end of 2001, it was revealed that Enron's reported financial position was manipulated by a systematic and preconceived accounting fraud, known since as the “Enron Scandal”. Enron has since become known as an infamous case of audacious corporate fraud and corruption.

The scandal also brought into question the accounting practices and activities of many corporations in the USA and was a factor in the creation of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. The scandal also led to the demise of the accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, which was Enron's auditor.

In more recent times, according to ASIC, based on samples of key audits performed by Deloitte, KPMG, PWC and Ernst & Young, over an 18 month period up to December 2016, 23% had not provided reasonable assurance that accounts were accurate or free of misstatements.

As stated in the Accounting Professional and Ethics Standards Board (APESB) APES 110 Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants, under Section 100 Introduction and Fundamental Principles,

“A distinguishing mark of the accountancy profession is its acceptance of the responsibility to act in the public interest.”

When sub-standard audits are performed and reasonable assurance cannot be reliably ascertained, there are consequential risks for key stakeholders, including auditors. In light of this, perform the following key assignment tasks:

1. Perform a key stakeholder analysis for an ASX listed company. Explain how the key stakeholders would be affected if material misstatements are not properly identified, disclosed or adjusted for in the finalised financial statements. What are the key risks posed to each key stakeholder you have identified?

2. Consider the concepts of independence and “whistleblowing” in relation to auditors. How do these concepts relate to the public interest requirements mentioned in the APES 110 Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants document?

3. What lessons can auditors learn from the Enron scandal and in particular from the behaviour of Arthur Andersen?

4. With reference to the APES 110 Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants document and the ASIC website, research “audit quality” and discuss what auditors need to do to address the “warning” noted in the statement made by Greg Medcraft above.

The auditing system is a methodical platform that measures the effectiveness with which the financial statements incorporate the true facts and figures regarding the financial performance of any firm. The internal and external control of auditing facilitate the process of evaluation of the financial statements as well as the accounting information that are being incorporated within the annual reports that reflects the financial statements of the particular firm. Properly processed information regarding accountability of the functions that takes place within an organization in the form of operational, financial and investments activities are significantly monitored through the audit and assurance. Hence, there is crucial importance of incorporating effective auditing techniques that approaches to determine the actual financial condition of the organization that execute their businesses by deploying products and services in the specific markets where it operates. Moreover, the financial information and accounting facts and figures that are being represented within the annual reports of the firm are considered significant by the investors, speculators, stakeholder and other market players.

Due to this reason the annual reports should not represent any falsified information as it may hamper the authenticity of the information by incorporating fraudulent practice of accounting information which creates much more asymmetry through the exchange of wrong information. This paper into the necessity of audit and assurance and how it helps to restrict incorporation of falsified information within the annual reports of a firm that hinders the market perception of the investors as well as other market player that influences the overall performance of the firm  in the long run.

Westpac bank is one of Australia largest bank in terms of market capitalization along with Commonwealth Bank of Australia. It is one of the ASX listed company that have diversified stakeholders that are inclusive of employees, subsidiary organizations, customers, media, suppliers, etc. The revenue earning of the company is 21.642 billion by the year 2015 while its net income is 8.012 billion and the amount of total assets are 879.5592 billion by the year 2018. The total number of employee strength that Westpac bank possess are 35, 029 having 1322 branches and 3222 ATMs.  The Westpac bank (WBC) was established in the year 1817 in Sydney as the first bank in Australia with the name of Bank of New South Wales. The key divisions of the bank includes BT group, Westpac Institutional bank, consumer bank, business bank, Westpac New Zealand and the commercial bank. The following stakeholders are being identified based on the scrutiny that were relevant with material misstatement:

In 2016, the Westpac bank was mentioned in a lawsuit by the Australian securities and the investment division due to their manipulation of the Australian benchmark interest rates. The reserve borrowings in the year 2009 by Westpac bank owned security of $1.09 billion from the federal reserve of United States of America. However, the bank possess a minor position in North America and hence this was considered as an unusual move as the borrowings took place at the height of the global financial crisis. Within short span of time government was being communicated regarding the numerous issues that caused problem in the financial operation of the firm. It was an alarming threat to the government as inaccuracy in the calculation of the taxes was found, which was incorporated in the fiscal reports causing material misstatement.

Task

The retails banking segment gets affected by the suppliers condition due to any monetary loss. This creates hurdles for the company while incorporating its off dues. The objective of the company is to maintain its accounting results in long term basis followed by providence of advantage to the suppliers by realizing their debts and hence maintaining the overall sustainability of the business.  Valuing the non-current assets and liabilities of the long term that are matter of concern for the suppliers help in avoiding the material misstatements.

Apart from this financial controversies Westpac bank also confronted with an operational anomaly regarding their investment in the Cola Mining industry of New Zealand. This was aroused by the climate changing organizations in the country of New Zealand for its deceitful step towards funding in the mining industry of Bathurst. It helped it to gain access in the resources of the mine coal on the Dennis ton Plateau. The company does not took under consideration the release of 218 million tons of carbon dioxide that will hamper the eco system brining unusual climate change. These aspects were not taken under consideration by the Westpac bank’s financial statements and incorporated as a CSR activity whereas criticism was faced by the company for involving in such funding activities for the sole motive of acquisition of profit. Moreover, the social impact of the company by the global sustainability leader namely Down Jones Sustainability Index for 2004 to 2007 where it was reflected that the company backed  logging operation in the Solomon island that use to destroy the rainforests (Schmidt et al., 2016). Due to this reason the Australian Greens called for the Bankasia. Hence, the stakeholders of the bank comprises of not only those who impacts the Westpac bank but also those who gets impacted due to the banks’ performance as well as decision making.  The diagrammatic figure for Westpac bank can be incorporated as follows:

Annual general meeting are being conducted in order to communicate with each and every shareholders twice in a year. Investors possess keen interest in understanding the facts and figures of the firm related to its capital allocation and interest rates related measures that are undertaken within that period in order to avoid low returns and misstatements. Besides corporate banking the company also have key stakeholders in the segments of   finance and insurance, investment, global wealth management, private equity, credit cards and mortgage market.  Along with the operation of the firm it seeks to engage all of its stakeholders into the process of financial, operational and investment activities and incorporate each and every financial information with proper accountability and being abide by the policies of international auditing standards.

The consumers and the employees of the company are also important stakeholders of Westpac bank. Based on the degree of importance and the level of interest among the stakeholders the preferences varies as follows:

The structural approach renders a categorization of the periodic identification and prioritization through the usage of appropriately accounted financial information. To clarify the ownership and managing the shareholders accordingly effective regulatory protocols are being implemented by the Westpac Bank that encourages the shareholders’ involvement with the organization in the long run (Pratt and Peters, 2017). Effective configuration for the long term strategic decisions becomes easier to implement due to the auditing standard and the company’s tendency to remain abided with it. Telephonic calls, emails, responding customer queries through personal meetings as well as through messages or letter as required, etc. are executed by the company to maintain transparency and strength the interrelationship of the consumer and employees with the organization. The queries of the consumers as well as of the employees are resolved based on their feedback and responded back to them in the next working day. Decision making is done willingly by all of the staffs and there is no discrimination allowed on this respect. Whistle blow process is followed as the consumers and employees decisions are dependent upon the fiscal reports of the company. This supports the process of building strong relationship with the clients and ensures success of any organization and create organizational value for the long term. WBC also focuses on the same by maintaining a flexibility towards their relationship with the stakeholders by ensuring engagement of the shareholders through transparent of the financial information and accounting feasibility (Martínez-Ferrero and García-Sánchez, 2018).

Key Stakeholder Analysis

The aspect of independence of the auditors rejuvenates the fact that audits as well as the decision of the auditors should be implemented independently when audits are being conducted in order to avoid any form of infringement of fraudulent practices.  On the other hand, the person who exposes any kind of information that seem to be illegal or unethical from the perspective organizational effectiveness is termed as whistleblowing. In general the organization should prefer to keep the information public regarding their business performance. However, it is been found that organization’s reveals those information to the public that protects their performance as per expectation of the public. This process gets revealed through implementation of proper auditing technique or through the influence of the whistleblower. The whistleblowers are therefore very important in order to execute business activities being abided by the protocols of business ethics (Louwers et al., 2015). Hence the whistle blowers needs protection from the authorities since they are taking risk regarding revealing sensitive information about the misconduct of the business process that is being done by a company.

The whistleblowing act 1998 was thus formed in order to serve for the public interest and disclose information for protecting the individuals that are involved in whistleblowing. They risk their jobs and reveals information about the wrong performance disclosure of the companies both in the operational, financial as well as managerial activities. Their protection is thus of highest priority for the government who investigates the case. The clues that are being provided by the whistleblowers gets thoroughly verified and until then the role of the government is to keep their identity secret and provide sufficient protection so that the whistleblowers do not hesitate for revealing the prioritized information regarding misinformation that are revealed by the organizations through their annual reports and the true information are being kept secret. These information that are kept secret by the organization is to maintain the level of interest of the investors, suppliers, etc. and other stakeholders up to the stipulated level that the organization’s wants to keep (Knechel and Salterio, 2016).

As per the regulation APES 110 Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants issued by “Accounting Professional and Ethical Standards Board (APESB)” the section 210.11.1 of the APES 110 code, it is been incorporated that the auditor who is presently designated shall seek permission from the client to have communication with the previous auditors. However, if it is found that the response is negative from the client then the auditor is wilted. Misconduct should be informed to the government where protection for freedom of workers as well as right of speech should be given priority.

Section 100.1 of APES 110 incorporates that breaching may be of the following means like:

• Act, regulation or guidelines
• Gross mishandling
• Gross fund excess
• Precise hazard to well-being or to communal security
• Exploitation of Authority

The whistleblowing process of two different types among which the whistleblower reports about involvement of other person in illegal activities that hampers the organizational performance and encourages malpractice of the organization under the table. While the second form of whistleblowing comes into upfront when an external person outside the organization reports about the conduct of any other person within the organization that encourages misconduct or unethical practice of organizational activities. These whistleblowers may include former employees or responsible employees that are loyal to the organizational betterment and risks themselves in order to ensure it (Knechel, 2016). They prefer to ensure that the organization is running through the codes of business ethics as per the APES 110 code of conduct for making the professional accountant support the stakeholder’s of an organization and serve the public interest. The employers my sack those employees if they found them to reveal their illegal means of business and hence the identity of the whistleblowers are kept confidential. Therefore, proper state and federal protection is of vivid importance in case of the whistleblowers.  

Enron was involved in the business of an electric goods and services. It use to serve the public with its electrical commodities providing supportive assistance regarding electrical problems too.   

The capital market needs representation of the correct counting information since the investors, shareholders as well as other stakeholders of the company hugely depends on the financial facts and figures that are being represented in the annual reports of a corporate. However, it was been found that the company showcases its revenue very high in its annual report for which the investors kept faith on the fact that the company will grow overtime. The revenue generation is an effective instrument to attract investors and maintain them with the company for which the value of market share for the company do not fall. This was an illegal strategic endeavor by the superior management personnel of the company for which they negotiated with the auditing agency Arthur Anderson and maintained their annual reports is specific financial years from 1995 to 2000 by incorporating falsified financial statements that manipulated the results in exchange of incentives (Kend and Basioudis, 2018). The past investors who found that the revenue level of the company is rising remain interested towards investing in the company. However, the actual scenario was that the company did not reflected their true revenue earnings in their financial reports in those fiscal years and along with that bribed the auditing agency Arthur Anderson in approving their financial reports. The expectation of the investors remain intact as they saw that the revenue earnings of the company is rising and hence it will rising in the coming years too which gave the company an opportunity to keep the investors loyal to the company and maintains its market value at high level. This does not reduce their market share rather increased it (Gu, Simunic and Stein, 2017). This information thus becomes fraudulent representation of the actual scenario and just gets incorporated for keeping the expectation of the stakeholders high so that the market value of the organization do not deteriorate. These misconduct of the information whether it be financial, non-financial, operational, and managerial, etc. involves encouragement of corruption in an intentional way in order to keep the interest of the investors very high so that they always prefer to invest in the company for the time being. Illegal exercise of such activities at the workplace deteriorate the organizational culture and breaks the integrity of an organizational culture.

The auditors experience on this regard relates to the importance of handing over the auditing work to the government rather than to a private agency. To reduce this inherent risk the auditors should take an obligatory move to safeguard the transition through assortment of the auditors by not allowing the influence of higher level bodies upon them. Strict regulations are necessary to obstruct the dominancy of the hierarchy (Gay & Simnett, 2019). This requires the implementation of the accounting standards. This allows the organization to remain the point of interest to the suppliers, creditors, investors, etc. though in the long run all of these stakeholders face financial suffering due to misconduct of the organization through fake representation of their financial statements in their annual reports.

The catastrophe of Enron revealed that there is severe necessity for accomplishing effective governance and development of reliable and systematic process of auditing based on efficient protocols and monitoring activities by the auditors.  Effective auditing was often found to be bias due to the reason that the organization bribes the auditing agencies for which they showcase falsified information too in order to make the investors believe that the cross checking agencies of the organizational performance are also certifying their performance (Gist et al., 2015). This allows the investors to keep their trust upon the organization to the highest level. Whistleblowers on the other hand restricts the investors from getting misled by revealing the true information regarding the organizational performance and hence needs sufficient protection so that the risks they takes to do something good should not get suppressed or clobbered before completion of the investigation.

The investigators needs sufficient clues before questioning the wrong representation of the performance of the organizations. The clues conveyed by the whistleblowers should be extensively verified from every ends. Due to this reason the act of whistleblowing is to discourage the fraudulence that is taking place with the stakeholders of the organization without their knowledge that is taking place unknowingly (Eaton et al., 2017). Some of the people within the company were aware of such activities and so they invested in the company and after a certain point if time extracted out their purchased share.  In case of Enron the whistleblower was Sheron Watkins who revealed this trick of Enron. Since the share price was high lot of investors were impressed by the track records of the past performance of the company. However, it was not revealed that the accounting information were false before Sheron Watkins provided substantial clues about the phenomenon which took time for the government agencies to investigate and put an halt about the trues facts that can question the performance of the firm. Since the external firm that verified the accounting information of Enron was Arthur Anderson that itself was a reputed auditing firm hence their approval of the financial reports of Enron were not questioned.

The people who were aware of the fraudulent practice that Enron was practicing, it was evident that those people injected their money in and Enron and before the fall of its share prices extracted them back when the share prices of the company was high (Chambers and Odar., 2015). This gave them the opportunity to earn lump sum profit within a shorter span of time. However, those investors who invested based on the accounting figure of the financial statements and past trend analysis of Enron were in a nadir of despair being fully unaware about the scandal that was going within the companies accounting practices. Notably, Enron version for manipulating their financial figures was that they thought if their technological deal of using advanced equipment are being implemented then that would have earned them guaranteed profit followed by capitalizing higher market share and optimizing their sales of electrical goods and services. Due to this reason they reflected forecasted revenue earnings in their financial reports which they thought to readjust in the later consecutive year’s financial reports after the business deal would have been implemented (Barr-Pulliam et al., 2017). However, this is based on mere speculation and was not at all the true representation of the actual facts and figures. Hence, this was a malpractice of the accounting information and falsified representation of the financial data which took place due to the corrupted auditing of Arthur Anderson.

To improve the quality of the audit and to ensure that the auditing is being done based upon the auditing standards, globally recognizable external auditing initiatives were required to be facilities.  Irrespective of the fact that whether it is internal audit or external audit, it is important also to measure the appropriateness of the accounting information that are incorporated in the financial reports of any organization. The auditors possess significant role in examining the feasibility of the estimation process of the financial information as well as ensuring that the quality of the accounting information are up the mark. This is due to the fact that the accounting data and the financial information of a company’s past performance are being trusted by all the stakeholders and based on that they determines there further level of investment upon the company in the long run. If falsified information is being represented through the financial reports and analysis if the financial statements then there exist possibility of misguiding the investors (Averhals et al., 2018).

As per Greg Medcraft, Australia may get confronted with financial dangers like cases of Enron if the Big four firms for audit do not take sufficient initiatives to improve their auditing standards. This issues should be brought under notice as soon as possible and in accordance of which thee firms should be audited effectively so that no material misstatement can impact the financial statement as well as the accounting facts and figures in the annual reports negatively in the near future (Poor auditing could be 'canary in the coal mine' for financial crisis: ASIC, 2019). Hence, effective protocols and legal measures should be implemented for ensuring that the quality of audit is not low in case of any firm unless it will play with the money of people who trusted upon the performance of the company (ASIC Home | ASIC - Australian Securities and Investments Commission, 2019). Moreover, it is important that the firms should be involved in ethical business practice and don’t allow any corrupt activity that are illegal. Hence, effective monitoring and setting of regulatory endeavors in case of Auditing as per the APES 110 code of ethics for professional accountants documenting of financial information regarding any firms auditing. The indicators of efficient auditing should be much more credible and should not allow the auditors to violate the auditing norms.

As per the latest article, ASIC had examined the Key Audit samples of the Big 4 auditing firms for a period of one and a half years (Poor auditing could be 'canary in the coal mine' for financial crisis: ASIC, 2019). The scrutinizing of the reports reveals that about twenty three percent of the report of the auditing firms do not render sufficient assurance regarding the fiscal statements due to which reason the financial information are not free from material misstatement.  Moreover, the reports also highlight the fact that over eighty individuals submitted unfinished reports to the government and hence criminal charges as imposed upon them. The professional accountants of any auditing firm should remain abided by the code of recommended ethics according to which professional behavior of the accountants encompasses the necessity of practicing objectivity, integrity, confidentiality by the auditors.

In accordance with the APES 110 Section (100(1)) self – governing external evaluations should be protected and the auditors should serve their best in accomplishing the public interest at their highest priority. The assurance provided by them are trusted by the public and hence the auditors have no right to comprise with the interest of the public. As per the Section of APES 100 (2c) rejuvenates the aspect of safeguarding the intimidations and eliminate unnecessary misstatements thorough pragmatic approach and bringing it down to satisfactory level.

According to the APES 110 code of ethics, there should exist fairness in business deals and truthfulness while revealing financial information or accounting data in the annual reports of the firm which will be evaluated by the auditors in a transparent way (Ashcraft et al., 2017). Moreover, any information that contains a misleading statement or contains statement that are furnished recklessly should not be allowed. Omission of information is not allowed if they are required to be included unless it will lead to arousal o materialistically falsified information. Along with that if members are aware of the fact that any of the other member is associated with injection of wrong information within the financial reports then members should take step against them for breaching the code of ethical business practice that breaks the integrity of accounting information.

It was highlighted by Medcraft, that the probabilistic chance of facing incidence like Enron can be avoided if and only if the auditors of Australia traverse the path of ethical business practice remaining with the codes and protocols of accounts monitoring as per APES. The personal interest as well as the professional responsibilities of the auditors both are being preserved through the accounting standards as maintained by APES 110 since it directs towards maintaining cordial and ethical auditing practices. The basness in audit gets removed and the confidentiality of the audit requirements are being kept through true ans fair means of information exchange that are credible and do mnot allow the breaching of the code of business accountability and feasibility of the financial information followed by allowing the auditors to prepare an unbiased accounting report.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that ethical business practice is only possible when the organization incorporates their accounting information appropriately and that are being verified by the auditors fairly in case of Westpac Bank. The sudden bankruptcy of the firm like Enron hampers the investment of the investors who trusted upon the financial statements of the firm followed by leading them in huge trouble and it should not get repeated in other firms like Westpac banks if the auditors encourages the necessity appropriate auditing practices. Among them some investors may be the employees of the organization itself who may not be potentially sound from financial perspectives. This will hamper those kind of investors at large. Hence, unethical practice of incorporating financial information by revealing any kind of falsified accounting information and engaging the auditing firm in allowing such kind of malpractice is a breach of ethical business practice and should be eradicated as soon as possible. The whistleblowers should be protected by the government and all the respective information provided by them should be thoroughly examined in order to restrict the formation of another incidence similar to Enron and Arthur Anderson. In case of Westpac bank the focus of the company is now ahead towards creating a credible environment for boosting the shareholder relationship over a long run period. The sustainability framework is the key priority for the company that is inclusive of its services in the commercial and retail banking segments so that the financial services that the company renders to its stakeholders do not get obstructed at any cost. The financial statements in the annual reports is inclusive of the key issues that measures the responsiveness of the company towards its stakeholders and ensure effective management of the auditing process. This makes the firm financially sound and credible towards its investors. Moreover, the auditing firms like Ernst & Young, KPMG, PWC, Deloitte, etc. those which verifies the annual statements of Westpac bank are credible too due to their effective audit and assurance practice. This encourages the creditworthy investors as well as other financial speculators that are allied with the organization.

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