Impact of Amendments of the Certified Public Accountants' Report According to ISA 700 on Narrowing the Expectations Gap and Improving the Communication of the Audit Result to the Users of Financial Statements: Evidence from Jordan.

Abstract

This study aimed at identifying the importance and acceptance of the amendments of the certified public accountants’ report according to the revised International Standard on Auditing No. 700, which became effective as of 31/12/2016. It also aimed at identifying the contribution of these amendments in improving the communication process of the audit result, as well as their effects on the audit expectations gap, auditors’ responsibilities and audit cost and procedures. To achieve the objectives of the study, a questionnaire was developed and distributed to a sample of 100 units of each group of the study population, including certified public accountants, financial managers and institutional investors of shareholding companies in Jordan. The researcher used a set of statistical techniques, including descriptive statistics, one - sample T-test, One - Way ANOVA and Tukey test, to analyze the data and test the hypotheses of the study. The results of the study showed that the amendments of the certified public accountants’ report are important and acceptable with a degree over the average and are important in narrowing the expectations gap and improving the communication process of the audit result from the view point of the three groups. However, the views of the respondents showed that audit costs, auditors’ responsibilities and audit procedures will increase as a result of these amendments. The results also showed that there are statistically significant differences among the views of the study groups regarding the impact of these amendments on the expectations gap and the degree of the improvement of the communication process of the audit result. Based on the results of the study, the researcher presented many recommendations, the most important of which are performing a periodic review of the audit report and taking feedback from the implementation of the report to reduce any unnecessary issues mentioned in the report, such as the management responsibilities and the audit procedures.