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This study aims to explore the challenges in the construction of the audit report by a public sector organisation within a non-financial information (NFI) audit context.

This field study primarily uses data collected from semi-structured interviews, in addition to internal and external documents. The data are framed around the generic key audit report elements including audience, scope and criteria, and draw upon insights from Power (1999, 2003a, b) into NFI assurance and Fiske's (1990) insights into communication to draw inferences on the communicative value of the audit report under study.

The findings provide insights into the challenges in determining the appropriate stakeholder audience, objective, content and format of audit reports in a complex non-financial subject matter context. Despite the organisation going to considerable lengths to understand their audiences' needs and audit objectives/criteria when constructing the audit report as the literature suggests, unintended consequences resulted and the communicative value of the audit report was still questionable.

The evidence was analysed from an assuror's perspective. Future research may examine in more detail the user's perceptions on the communicative value of the NFI financial audit report.

The paper's insights into one organisations' challenge in developing appropriate reporting practice(s) within a “new” NFI context have practical implications for the development of emerging assurance practices of other NFI both in public and private sector.

This paper is one of very few studies to use in-action field study approach to comprehensively examine how audit reporting practice develops in a complex non-financial subject matter context within a public sector context.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature and extent of internal audit functions’ (IAFs) involvement in environmental, social and governance assurance (ESG) and consulting in Australia. To identify emerging priorities, and the profession’s capacity to respond to these, the paper also explores internal audit practitioners’ perceptions of the current and future importance of these issues and the adequacy of their skills and expertise in meeting the challenges associated with their involvement in these areas.

Data were collected from 100 Chief Audit Executives and internal audit service provider partners through a survey.

Governance issues are a key area of focus for respondents’ assurance and consulting efforts, followed by social and environmental issues, respectively. While governance issues are perceived to be of greatest current importance to IAFs, environmental issues are most commonly expected to increase in importance over the next five years, and are reported to be in greatest need of further development of IAFs’ skills and expertise.

As the corporate landscape and expectations around transparency and accountability increase, the internal audit profession needs to address the current perceived skills gap in their ability to provide assurance and consulting on ESG issues to ensure their continued relevance and ability to meet stakeholders’ needs and expectations in providing effective integrated assurance and in contributing to internal improvements.

This paper provides initial empirical evidence of the nature and extent of internal audit’s involvement in ESG assurance and consulting.

Global climate change has become a major societal issue providing the impetus for governments to legislate policy in order to manage and mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To assess whether the use of biomass can reduce GHG emissions requires accounting, reporting and assurance methods and procedures. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate key challenges of GHG reporting and assurance with the example of the Australian framework.

This viewpoint, discussing GHG emissions reporting and assurance, critically analyses some of the key issues arising in practice, including the current state of organizations' systems and controls, the changing nature of governance structures as well as measurement challenges being experienced by companies regarding GHG reporting.

The paper finds that more rigorous governance frameworks and management systems are likely to evolve around GHG reporting given the recent introduction of the carbon pricing mechanism and its nexus to companies' financial performance as well as increased risks associated with inaccurate reporting.

The paper contains an overview of the current regulatory environment and key issues surrounding GHG reporting and assurance.

The management of GHG‐related issues has significant implications for organisations. The paper provides both practitioner and academic perspectives on the current issues and challenges within the GHG reporting context.

This paper aims to investigate how the roles, characteristics, expectations and evaluation practices of audit committees have adapted to regulatory change and what practices are most conducive to effective audit committees.

This paper uses semi-structured interviews with audit committee chairs and chief audit executives.

While new regulation is a primary driver of changes in the roles of audit committees, the audit committee’s role has evolved beyond regulatory requirements. Audit committees are taking a more active role in organisational governance and performance in key areas such as risk management. However, while audit committees have a clear concept of what characteristics committee members require, conceptual frameworks and mechanisms for evaluating the performance of committees and their members remain underdeveloped.

The responses of audit committees in Australia to broader regulatory trends suggest that more research is required into how audit committees function in practice, and into developing new frameworks for evaluating the committees’ performance. This paper provides an in-depth exploration of key areas of audit committee performance, and identifies aspects that might be further investigated.

The paper identifies key attributes of effective audit committees and especially the characteristics of audit committee members. The paper also identifies a need to improve – and in many cases create – performance evaluation frameworks and mechanisms. Given the international regulatory trend towards greater reliance on audit committees to improve governance, more policy attention is required on developing guidelines and assessment processes that evaluate whether audit committees are fulfilling their legislative mandate in practice.

The paper contributes to the relatively new and more specific discussion on reviewing and evaluating the performance of the board and its subcommittees.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential impact of two affiliation factors, as encapsulated by the chief financial officer's (CFO) prior organizational (alumnus vs non‐alumnus) and professional background (audit vs non‐audit ex‐partner), on auditor independence in post‐Enron and post‐HIH era.

The study is a 2×2 factorial between subjects experimental design with 52 audit partners and managers as participants. The two manipulated independent variables are client CFO prior firm affiliation (alumni vs non‐alumni) and professional background (audit partner vs non‐audit partner providing taxation, accounting and other non‐audit services).

The results of the study do not appear to signal loss of independence and professional skepticism in auditors' judgment when dealing with an alumni or ex‐auditor CFO. On average, auditors' endorsement of the client's preferred aggressive accounting treatment is low and the audit adjustment is material and significantly greater than the client's proposed adjustment.

The 2001 corporate collapses of Enron in the USA and HIH in Australia have reshaped the auditing profession. HIH, the most publicized corporate fraud in Australia resulting in estimated losses of $5 billion, was partly blamed on Arthur Andersen yielding to management's aggressive accounting policies and failure to display independence as a result of close relationships between the former partners and the audit team. As distinct from a number of prior studies conducted pre‐Enron and pre‐HIH, the results of this study, conducted with experienced audit professionals in Australia, do not support a loss of independence and professional skepticism by auditors in the current post‐Enron and post‐HIH environment and are consistent with the findings of the only other recent experimental study by Kerler III and Killough examining the closeness of the auditor‐client relationship. The results are also consistent with results of recent archival studies which find a decline in earnings management behavior, either because of reduced management incentives or reduced auditor willingness to consent. The evidence of this study lends supports to the latter explanation.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the current roles and responsibilities of the internal audit (IA) function and the factors perceived to be necessary to ensure its effectiveness. The current performance evaluation practices of IA are also examined.

Semi‐structured interviews were utilised to elicit the perceptions of key corporate governance actors about the evolving role of IA, as well as IA effectiveness, in terms of its design, measurement and evaluation.

The results of the study suggest significant expansion and refocus of the role of IA and perceptions of its effectiveness. However, the findings also suggest that performance evaluation mechanisms of IA have not evolved contemporaneously. The misalignment between the role and evaluation gives rise to difficulty in assessing the extent to which IA functions are meeting stakeholders' expectations.

The findings are useful in informing the deliberations of regulators and standard setters, as well as providing a benchmark for internal auditors and audit committees. The insights are also relevant for external auditors who are required to consider various aspects of corporate governance, including the objectivity and quality of IA.

The use of semi‐structured interviews facilitates an in‐depth insight and understanding of the perceptions of roles, effectiveness and evaluation of IA and adds depth to the predominantly questionnaire‐based survey approach of prior studies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the presence of a code of ethics on the quality of auditors' judgments, within the context of the new International Standard on Quality Controls 1 (ISQC1).

A sample of 112 professional accountants and auditing students was employed to investigate the effect of the presence of a code of ethics (operationalised as the presence vs absence of an organisational code of conduct) on the quality of audit judgments, pertaining to an inventory writedown, using a 2 × 2 full factorial “between‐subjects” experimental design.

The results of this study indicate that the presence of a code of ethics has a positive impact on the quality of the judgments made by professional accountants, but not on students. This suggests that it is the code of ethics, in the context of greater general experience that leads to higher quality of judgments.

The results suggest that the requirements of ISQC1 are relevant to the quality control of accounting firms and have potential to positively impact the quality of audit performance.

This is the first paper to examine the impact of the presence of a code of ethics within an audit context. It is the first time that the interactive effects of the code of ethics and technical competency, which together form an integral part of standard‐setters' quality control standards, upon the quality of auditor judgments has been investigated.