Independent auditor's responsbility in the process of audit and the audit expectation gap: A study on the financial statement users in Turkey

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the audit expectation gap between independent external auditors and users of financial statements. Audit expectation gap is "the difference between what the public and financial statement users believe auditors are responsible for and what auditors themselves believe their responsibilities are" (Financial Times ft.com/lexicon; n.d.). According to literature audit expectation gap is constant, inevitable and detrimental for audit profession. To avoid from detriments of audit expectation gap, public should be educated and informed about the responsibilities of auditors so that audit expectation gap may be reduced and the credibility of the profession of independent audit may be increased. In this study, the audit expectation gap between independent external auditors and users of financial statements are tested on the basis of data gathered by questionnaire which was developed by reviewing the existing literature and details of legal requirements in Turkey and applied to 153 respondents consist of auditors and managers of companies, as a representative of users of financial statements. The results of this study show the existence of audit expectation gap between independent auditors and users of financial statements in Turkey only on a few audit issues. However, on majority of issues expectation gap could not be observed between the pointed out two groups. Another important point that the results of this study show is that, the aim of the independent audit and the responsibilities of independent auditors aren't clearly understood by the groups of auditors and financial statement users responded to the questionnaire developed and used in this study. Key Words: Independent audit agreement, audit expectation gap, legal responsibilities of independent auditors, criminal responsibilities of independent auditors.