Investigating the Auditor’s Adopted Safeguards in Ensuring Audit Quality amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from an Emerging Market

Abstract

The deadly and infectious COVID-19 respiratory disease has brought in its wake untold uncertainties on the business environment globally. The impact of this fatal pandemic has shocked the transactions of businesses and service providers, including auditing firms to the core. This paper, therefore, explored the safeguards adopted by the auditor to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on audit quality. An online survey was used to administer questionnaires to solicit 289 valid responses from partners and staff of auditing firms in Ghana using a purposive sampling technique. Partial Least Square – Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) approach was adopted in assessing the measurement and structural models. The outcome of the study proves that the auditor’s instituted safeguards significantly moderate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on audit quality. This study provides ample contributions to regulators in the auditing profession to appreciate the impact of the ills of the pandemic on audit quality that forms the basis of informed economic decisions by users of financial reports. The researchers suggest that auditors should apply the appropriate safeguards to anticipated challenges emanating from the pandemic on their practices to express a better opinion on assurance and non-assurance services rendered for clients.