Sarah O’Hann enjoyed taking her first auditing course as part of her undergraduate accounting program. While at home during her semester break, she and her father discussed the class and it was clear that he didn’t really understand the nature of the audit process as he asked the following questions:

a. What is the main objective of the audit of an entity’s financial statements?

b. The audit represents the CPA firm’s guarantee about the accuracy of the financial statements, right?

c. Isn’t the auditor’s primary responsibility to detect all kinds of fraud at the client?

d. Given the CPA firm is auditing financial statements, why would they need to understand anything about the client’s business?

e. What does the auditor do in an audit other than verify the mathematical accuracy of the numbers in the financial statements?

If you were Sarah, how would you respond to each question?

Objective 1

Use U.S. auditing standards as a basis for further study.