Exploring expectation gap among independent auditors' points of view and university students about importance of fraud risk components

Abstract

The purpose of this study is exploring expectation gap among university students and auditors points of view about importance of fraud risk components. To get this purpose, university students' ideas and auditors about importance of each mentioned fraud risk components in Iranian auditing standard No. 24 under the title of "the auditor's responsibilities relating to fraud in an audit of financial statements" is questioned. Data gathering tool in this study is questionnaire that its content and construct validity was confirmed. Test results have shown that auditors' points of view have significant difference in evaluating importance of fraud risk components with university students' opinions. The most important fraud risk components according to auditors and university students' points of view are "dependence of a main part of salaries and benefits of managers on operations results, financial statements, or cash flows" and "lack of supervision from management on important internal controls". Fraud components are classified into four groups according to their occurrence conditions: 1. management characteristics, 2. industry conditions, 3. operating characteristics including financial stability, and 4. misappropriation of asset. According to results obtained from test hypotheses, it was determined that the most important fraud risk components based on auditors' points of view is related to misappropriation of asset, but based on university students' point of view, fraud risk components related to management characteristics is more important than other three groups of fraud components.