Audit Process, Reliability and Expectation Gap: A Comprehensive Analysis

Jiang Tao

International Accounting and Financial Management, University of Glasgow, Glasgow,UK.226011；

Abstract：This paper systematically reviews the complete process of corporate financial audit, including audit planning, audit testing and audit completion. It analyzes the factors that support audit reliability from the perspectives of auditing standards, the UK Companies Act 2006, International Accounting Standards and professional ethics. Meanwhile, the study identifies key threats to audit reliability, such as insufficient audit evidence, corporate errors and fraud, inappropriate risk assessment and lack of auditor independence, with typical cases including Enron and WorldCom. In addition, the paper explains the audit expectation gap, which refers to the divergence between financial statement users’ expectations and auditors’ actual responsibilities. The conclusion shows that standardized audit systems and procedures can generally guarantee reasonable assurance, while audit failures still occur due to practical limitations and human factors.

Keywords:Audit process; Audit reliability; Audit expectation gap; Internal control; Audit evidence

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