Meeting expectations and building a brighter future for auditing in South Africa

Abstract

The auditing profession in South Africa, like other countries in the English speaking world, is experiencing the effects of the so-called expectation gap. An ad-hoc committee of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) investigated the expectation gap with regard to the auditing profession in South Africa and published a Discussion Paper (DP12) that contains a strategy to deal with the problems of the expectation gap. In this paper die contents of DP12 is examined and subjected to analysis. We have not adopted an approach of evaluating and considering all recommendations and arguments in DP12 because a wider, more fundamental approach was followed. The process that the Expectation Gap Ad-Hoc Committee followed is also examined and evaluated.