Extended Audit Reporting. An insight from the auditing profession in Poland

Abstract

The audit-reporting model has been on the agenda of researchers and regulators for a long time. The recent regulatory proposals, consultation papers, discussion and research reports on audit reporting have intensified the discussion regarding whether the current standard audit report communicates the appropri-ate information to the users of the report. The Polish auditing model is an interesting case to study in the context of audit reporting. Poland already has experience in the preparation of an additional report, which is aimed at providing more information to all stakeholders. The paper seeks to address two questions. The first one is to what extent the Polish extended audit re-port contributes to the reduction of the expectation and information gaps, and the second question is about the possibilities of improvements of the audit report in general. Based on our interview findings, we conclude that the auditors perceive the audit report to be general-ly useful for its users. However, analysis of the data provides mixed evidence with regard to the extended audit report. Auditors acknowledge the usefulness of the extended audit report to report on additional issues and concerns but, at the same time, the standard form of the extended audit report as prescribed in the Polish Auditing Standards is found to have little information value to its users.