Communicating key audit matters in the independent auditor's report and expectation gap

It is stated that 'expectation gap' is an important obstacle for the independent audit activity to provide its expected functions. Some studies have been carried out in the past in order to overcome the expectations by considering this problem, but it has been observed that these studies have not been fully successful. Recently significant changes were made related to the independent audit report by a comprehensive study, which was conducted to reduce the expectation gap about independent audit reports, and the ISA 701 Communicating Key Audit Matters in the Independent Auditor's Report was published. In this research, "Key Audit Matters" and the opinions of audit reports users related to other changes in the independent audit reports were examined. Therefore, perceptions, awareness and expectations of the auditors, business managers, brokerage managers and managers working in credit allocation units of banks regarding key audit matters and other changes have been examined. By that, it is investigated whether there is an expectation gap between these interest groups. Survey technique was used in the study, the data were evaluated by statistical techniques and as a result, it is found that there are significant expectation gap between the independent audit interest groups regarding the key audit matters.