현행 공인회계사 비감사서비스 관련 직무수행제한 규정의 문제점 및 개선방안

Abstract

This study examines the effectiveness and potential problems with the restriction on non-audit services by incumbent auditors under the existing rules. The list of restricted non-audit services in Korea are stated by several different rules/regulations as well as KICPA's auditing standards. However, the types of non-audit services restricted are inconsistent across the rules. As a result, practitioners have expressed difficulty in applying respective rules. This study also review the recent development of the International Federation of Accountants' international ethical standards. Several regulations and standards prescribe the restriction on certain non-audit services. KICPA decided to adopt the international ethical standards developed by the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA). In order to identify potential problems regarding the existing systems on the restriction of non-audit services in Korea, we conducted a survey on experienced external auditors. The results of survey indicate that exteranl auditors generally believe that the restriction based on the listed non-audit services by rules may not be desirable. Instead, the establishment of safeguards and sound quality control by both audit firms and regulators may be more effective in maintaining auditor independence and audit quality. This is because under rapidly changing business environment, some unrestricted non-audit services may in fact deteriorate auditor independence while some restricted non-audit services may improve audit quality as a result of the dominance of knowledge spillover effect. Therefore, the principle based approach would be more desirable in confirming auditor independence. In addition, audit only firm may result in the deterioration of audit quality because of low profitability and severe competition across audit firms to retain/gain new clients. As Korean government adopted international financial reporting standards which is based on EU accounting standards, auditing ethical standards in EU have also been of interest. In particular, this study suggests that unlike the current systems, the government considers adopting the principle based restriction systems as opposed to the rule based restriction systems pertaining to non-audit services provided by incumbent auditors. Rules may simply state the restriction principles and regulators monitor the effectiveness of safeguards accounting firms have established and maintained. Safeguards should include both from auditor level and auditee level.