Auditors' response to regulators during COVID-19: disclosures of key audit matters

PurposeNew Zealand regulatory bodies guided preparers and auditors of financial statements to deal with potential COVID-19 impacts on the financial statements and audit procedures. This study provides evidence of auditors' response to the impact of COVID-19 on the reporting of key audit matters (KAMs) in audit reports of listed companies in New Zealand. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.Design/methodology/approachA sample of 50 New Zealand listed companies was selected to compare the KAMs in 2019 (pre-COVID-19) and 2020 (during COVID-19). The study uses content analysis to evaluate the KAMs' disclosures and descriptive analysis to examine the differences between 2019 and 2020 in terms of the auditor type, industry sector and accounting standards.FindingsAuditors responded positively to the request from regulators to communicate the impacts of COVID-19. The findings show an increase in the amount and length of KAMs in 2020 compared to 2019, with 82% of companies and 61% of KAMs reporting the impact of COVID-19. The real estate and information technology sectors disclosed more on the impact than other sectors. In analysing the KAMs, accounting standards for inventories, property plant and equipment, impairment of assets, investment property, revenue from contracts with customers and leases were highly affected by COVID-19.Practical implicationsThe findings support regulators to evaluate how well auditors communicated matters relating to COVID-19 in the audit report. Also, the findings will help standard setters to identify key accounting standards affected by COVID-19 of KAMs and provide insights to users on how the KAM reporting enhances communicative value during the pandemic.Originality/valueThe current study captures the impact of COVID-19 on the reporting of KAMs by comparing changes before and during the pandemic.

Enhancing Employee Resilience: Certified Public Accountant

[...]enhancing employee resilience levels can have a powerful protective effect against three common causes of job stress: role overload, role conflict, and role ambiguity. Both of these situations are expected to become more frequent and intense as the world faces challenges presented by the digital age, natural disasters related to global climate change, and economic disruptions such as the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. * Role conflict arises when employees are given incompatible (or contradictory) instructions. Research by Ronald Jelinek and Kate Jelinek ("Auditors Gone Wild: The Other Problem in Public Accounting," Business Horizons, vol. 51, pp. 223233, 2008) shows that auditors are particularly prone to role ambiguity arising from shortages of experienced staff, internal control auditing procedures required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), and regulations related to highly publicized accounting scandals (e.g., Dodd-Frank). The importance of stress arousal should not be overlooked, however, as each of its reported relationships with the three organizational outcomes were also statistically significant. [...]though not illustrated graphically, role conflict, role ambiguity, and