Practice review in Singapore

• Main Authors: Cheah, Le Sa, Tay, Karen Lay Sun, Ong, Suat Li
• Other Authors: Clement Tan Kai Guan
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Business::Auditing
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/63010
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The number of lawsuits against auditors has significantly increased due to the recent spate of company fraud and company collapses. As a result, the image of the auditing profession has also suffered a bad reputation. To restore public confidence and support for the auditing profession, peer review has been introduced in United States and Australia. In Singapore, the accounting body, The Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Singapore (ICPAS), is also following suit by introducing practice review as a compulsory procedure for all auditing firms. Presently, the agenda for Practice Review is only at the discussion memorandum stage. Practice Review is scheduled to be implemented by July 1994. Every public accounting fum is subject to a review every 3 years. Due to the limited information available to practising CPAs, there has been much doubts and uncertainty regarding the benefits of practice review in Singapore. Thus, this study seeks to address the following issues: 1. Will practice review enhance the image of the profession? 2. Will practice review enhance the quality control procedures of the CPA firms? 3. Is practice review cost-justified with regards to the two major benefits identified above? A questionnaire survey on 178 practicing CPAs from big and small CPA firms in Singapore was conducted to collect data to address the above issues. This research is further substantiated by a literature study. The research results indicated that the majority agreed that practice review can enhance the image of the profession and the quality of work done. There were substantially equal percentage of those who felt that practice review is cost justified and those that felt otherwise. It was also found that there was no significant correlation between opinions of CPAs from small and large accounting firms regarding the issues identified.