DUTIES OF EXTERNAL AUDITORS
External auditors are tasked with the responsibility of auditing a company’s financial statements. The auditors are further required to provide reasonable assurance that conforms to GAAP and provides a true reflection of the company’s financial position (Garcia, 2019). Therefore, auditors are required to express their opinion on the effectiveness of the design and operation of a company. The functionality of auditors is, therefore, dependent on the credibility of financial reports to reduce the risk of misinformation, resulting in inaccurate information. As a result, external auditors play a critical role in validating a firm’s finances with financial statements serving as proof of evidence. The assurance provided by external auditors are free from misstatements thus should be prepared based on developed accounting frameworks. As such, external auditors are subject to examination by the accounting systems to avert any form of irregularities.
In addition, auditors are responsible for understanding the entity of the accounting environment. So, external auditors perform the initial risk assessment to ensure that information is not compromised. As such, the auditors would be in a position to compare a business with others in the industry by identifying irregularities present in the current system (Garcia, 2019). Therefore, the auditors are empowered to report any financial misinformation which would pose dire consequences on organizational sustainability in the future. Finally, external auditors are responsible for maintaining an independent attitude of the business portfolio. The external auditors provide stakeholders with the necessary freedom to enable them to carry out their duties without any fear of intimidation. Hence, auditors are required to provide their opinions on the best course of action that should be adopted by a company.
Reference
Garcia, M. (2019). Roles & Responsibilities of External Audit Firms. Retrieved 11 April 2020, from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/roles-responsibilities-external-audit-firms-73924.html