Remaking audit: A plan for culture change and regulatory reform
Article
Auditors should fulfil the role of trusted referees who speak up, challenge, and conduct reliable detective work on behalf of society, checking whether businesses report an informative picture about their operations. If the audit sector does its job well, its outputs should be all but boring. However, the sector is a long way away from that. In this report we highlight how to get there.
In our first report, we showed the need for profound reform in the audit industry. In this paper, we flesh out how we think these areas should be tackled, with a particular emphasis on the need for policy changes that trigger culture change in audit firms.
While there have been a number of proposals in the other five of the areas highlighted above (which we draw on), recommendations around culture change tend to be particularly under-developed. We aim to fill this gap with our proposals.
Related items
Planes, trains and automobiles: How green transport can drive manufacturing growth in the UK
Transport is essential to our lives. Unfortunately, it is currently also the largest source of UK domestic carbon emissions.Regional economies: The role of industrial strategy as a pathway to greener growth
Regions like the North should have a key role to play in the development of a green industrial strategy.Achieving the 2030 child poverty target: The distance left to travel
On 27 March, the Scottish government will announce whether Scotland’s 2023 child poverty target – no more than 18 per cent of children in poverty – was achieved.