Consideration of respondents' attitudes towards the concept of ethics in the audit profession

Abstract

The primary objective of the auditor engaged in the audit of financial statements is to provide a professional and independent opinion on whether the financial statements have been prepared by international accounting standards and relevant legislation. In this way, auditors provide credibility to financial statements. Unreliable financial statements can harm all stakeholders. To this end, professional associations have developed a set of ethical rules that protect the audit profession and ensure that auditors perform their work with high ethical awareness. The subject of the paper is research on whether professional practitioners in the Republic of Serbia who deal with auditing are familiar with ethical standards and whether they apply them in their work, especially in situations where there is a threat to their independence. We also investigated whether there is a difference in knowledge and application of ethical standards between professional practitioners in auditing in the private and public sectors of the Republic of Serbia, as well as whether ethical standards for both sectors are adequately defined. The main conclusion is that audit practitioners in the public sector in the Republic of Serbia have less developed awareness of compliance with ethical rules compared to professional practitioners in the private sector, with the perceived need for additional training for audit practitioners in both sectors.