On The Causes Of Audit Risks And Preventive Measures

Audit quality is the lifeline of audit work, but in recent years, accounting information distortion is serious in China. In addition, various units and departments have various means of "counter auditing", and the auditing environment is becoming more and more complex, which makes audit risk increase day by day.

Audit risk has become a problem that national audit institutions, social audit organizations and internal audit institutions and auditors need to pay attention to and study.

This paper tries to analyze the causes of audit risk from two aspects: subjective and objective, and puts forward how to effectively control and guard against audit risks so as to make the audit serve the national economic development better.

Audit risk, financial statement control, International Auditing Standard No. twenty-fifth, "importance and audit risk" defines audit risk as "audit risk refers to the risk that audit staff may provide inappropriate opinions on financial information in essence false positives".

The United States audit standards statement No. forty-seventh (SAS47) said: "audit risk is the risk that auditors do not intend to correct the audit opinion without giving adequate correction to the financial statements containing important misstatements."

China's "independent auditing specific criteria ninth - internal control and audit risk" defines audit risk as "audit risk", which refers to the existence of material misstatements or omissions in accounting statements, and the possibility of inappropriate auditing after the CPA audit.

Although the above three definitions are different in definition, the meaning of audit risk is basically consistent, that is, audit risk refers to auditors' statements of financial statements with significant misstatements and omissions. After auditing, it is considered that there is no risk of discrepancy between audit opinions and facts.

Therefore, we can think that audit risk consists of two risks: on the one hand, the risk of major misstatement and omission in the financial statements itself; on the other hand, after auditors' audit, there is no risk of major misstatement and omission.

That is to say, audit risk is the combination of objective and subjective factors: audit risk = inherent risk * risk control * risk checking.

The reasons why audit risks arise are: (1) the objective reasons for audit risks; 1.. The changing legal environment in which audit activities are situated; the market economy is a legal economy.

As an important part of economic life, auditing activities also accept legal norms and adjustments without exception.

The law endows the audit department with the right, while also giving it corresponding responsibilities.

The expansion of audit responsibility is an important reason for audit risk.

The more developed the market economy, the higher the requirements of the state and the society for auditing. The audit object expands from the entrusted financial responsibility to the management responsibility and the management responsibility; the audit scope extends from the accounting record to the business activity; the audit function evolves from the economic supervision to the economic certification and economic evaluation based on the supervision.

The auditor's audit responsibility is extended from the correctness of the checking account to the proof of whether there is any major fraud in the examined business activities, whether there is a serious loss or waste problem.

The more responsibility the audit bears, the greater the risk of audit.

The complexity and diversity of the 2. audit objects has increased the risk of audit. At present, the national economy has seen a rapid growth. A breakthrough has been made in the reform of key areas, a large number of foreign investment has been introduced, and private, joint, individual and other economic components coexist.

Various economic organizations are complicated in their types of economic operations and changeable in trading tools. New problems such as lease, lease, acquisition, merger, bankruptcy, reorganization and related party pactions are constantly emerging. The complicated audit objects are all or part of the economic activities and carriers of the audited units.

The main carrier of economic activities is accounting information and other related information.

The public asks the auditors to reveal major errors and fraud, and to evaluate the ability of the enterprises to continue their operations, and to make a report on whether the enterprises comply with the law and discipline in financial matters.

However, the information uncertainty in this area is very large and the risk of information is also high. The correctness of the conclusions drawn by the auditors is more difficult and the risk is inevitable.

In addition, the mistakes of enterprises themselves in accounting also become the reasons for the deviation of audit results.

3. audit risk brought about by computerized accounting.

At present, the accounting computerization units occupy a large proportion of the audited objects. Once the situation of deliberate tampering with computer programs occurs, the auditors' accounting information will be distorted, thus bringing audit risk to audit supervision.

(two) the subjective reasons for audit risk are 1.. The auditors should have the professional competence and professional skills required by the auditing standards.

Auditors' professional knowledge, analysis and judgement, work experience, whether they are objective, fair, realistic, conscientious and responsible, honest and honest, and maintain proper occupational concerns, have an important impact on the quality of audit work.

In reality, auditors' abilities and experience have certain limitations.

The relatively limited ability of auditors makes it difficult for the audit to fulfill its tasks and achieve all the expectations of the society. Therefore, auditing can meet the needs of the society rather than absolute.

In addition, the auditor's sense of responsibility and job concern are different. Audit activity is a kind of service nature. The auditor has the responsibility to carefully plan the review work to find out the error behavior that may have a significant impact on the financial statements, and at the same time, the auditors should apply professional skills and professional concerns in the implementation of the audit process.

It can be seen that auditors' sense of responsibility and professional concern are crucial to the conclusion of audit.

However, due to various factors, auditors are not able to meet the requirements, which will inevitably restrict the development of audit work and affect the quality of audit work.

The 2. audit method itself implies the risk of audit. Firstly, it relies too much on the internal control system of the audited unit. The establishment of the internal control system can reduce the mistakes and shortcomings in the economic activities, but because of the inherent limitations of the internal control system, it can not avoid all the mistakes and disadvantages.

For example, the unforeseen business situation of an enterprise or the emergence of special economic business, the original control measures are not applicable; the staff colluded with each other should be cheated; the discrepancy of managerial power or the sense of responsibility leads to the failure of the control system; the cost of controlling the cost of the control measures is too high, and the management authorities are abandonment.

All of these will cause the control system to fail and control risks.

In the face of a large number of accounting information, statistical sampling is often adopted. Although this method can improve audit efficiency, because of the differences in the methods of obtaining evidence and the differences between the sample and the overall, the audit results and objective facts will produce certain errors, which will also bring audit risks.

In addition, the importance of auditing is emphasized in modern auditing method, and the balance between audit cost and audit risk is emphasized. It is necessary to allow audit risk to exist in the auditing procedure adopted.

But in the specific application of audit affairs, auditors are not quite sure that the samples drawn can represent the whole, and there is always a deviation between subjective conclusions and objective facts.

Therefore, audit risk is inevitable.

Two, effective ways to control and guard against audit risks. First, establish and improve the auditing legal environment. With the continuous development of the market economy, new problems and new situations are emerging. Auditing is also facing many new tasks and new tasks.

Under such circumstances, it is necessary to improve effective auditing standards and legal systems to reasonably define the responsibilities of auditors.

We should continue to formulate and constantly improve audit legal norms.

With strict internal control system, we should improve auditing laws and regulations, strengthen audit quality control, restrict auditing behavior, standardize auditing operation, avoid randomness in auditing and avoid auditing risks, so that audit work can be followed by law.

(two) strengthening the internal management of audit institutions, implementing total quality control, improving audit quality is the key to prevent and defuse audit risks.

Quality and risk are inversely proportional, the higher the quality, the smaller the risk; conversely, the lower the quality, the greater the risk.

1., strengthen audit quality control.

The audit organization must strengthen the audit quality management and carry out the qualified auditing. We must adhere to four principles: the first is the standardization principle, that is, the audit work is carried out strictly according to the requirements of the audit jurisdiction and the auditing procedures; the two is the authenticity principle, that is, the auditors must be truthful and reliable in auditing evidence materials formed by auditors on the basis of auditing the assets and liabilities of the audited units; and the three is the principle of legality, that is, the issue of audit verification must be dealt with and evaluated according to the effective laws and regulations when the problems arise.

We should pay attention to the application of laws and regulations when auditing facts happen. Four, the principle of caution. That is, auditors should adhere to a scientific, rigorous, fair and authentic work style and attitude in auditing work, maintain a high sense of responsibility and always establish risk awareness.

2., adhere to the principle of independent auditing.

The principle of independent auditing refers to the independent exercise of audit supervision power by the auditing organs in accordance with the law, and the independent auditing activities, without interference from other administrative organs, social organizations and individuals.

(three) adopting risk oriented audit to reduce audit risk, existing audit risk, sampling audit method and analytical review method run through the whole process, and the audit result is bound to have certain risks.

The so-called audit sampling refers to a method to deduce a certain number of samples from the audit population and to deduce the general characteristics of audit according to the results of the audit.

In the process of sampling audit, whether decision-makers have the ability to design and use sampling plans can not be separated from auditors' professional judgment.

There are many uncertain factors in auditing.

These uncertainties should be solved by the correct judgement of the auditors.

However, it is difficult for auditors to evaluate the quality and quantity of sampling results, and it is difficult to achieve certain accuracy.

Risk oriented auditing is a kind of audit mode that applies the concept of audit risk to the audit process. It makes a systematic analysis and evaluation of audit risk to determine whether audit risk is within the tolerable range.

It mainly uses the method of analytical review, not only to evaluate the control risks of customers, but also to analyze and evaluate the various factors (subjective and objective) that generate risks, so as to determine the scope and key points of substantive testing, so that audit risk can be closely linked to the whole audit process and play a role in reducing risk.

In recent years, risk oriented auditing has been widely used in other countries in the world. The reason is that the audit risk is taken into consideration at the beginning of the audit preparation stage, and it is controlled at the lowest level, thereby reducing the legal liability of auditors and reducing audit risks.

(four) to carry out the audit of the computer system of the audited unit, to audit the computer system of the audited unit, we can find out the problematic procedures of the audited unit's computer system, so as to ensure the authenticity of the data and effectively avoid the risk of audit.