How to Strengthen the Audit Quality of Certified Public Accountants

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1. Establish and improve the risk responsibility system and clarify the scope of responsibility. From the perspective of risk control, establish and improve the internal responsibility management system of the firm. Its basic content is to clarify the responsibilities and authority of personnel at all levels and positions within the audit organization. Do everything with someone auditing, someone actually operating, someone responsible for guidance and supervision, and someone responsible for assessment, so that problems can be reflected in time and responsibilities can be clearly defined. This can not only reduce audit risk, but also improve work efficiency and save audit cost. Therefore, the establishment of risk responsibility system is the main means to reduce audit risk.

2. Improve the comprehensive quality of certified public accountants. Accounting firms should pay attention to two aspects: on the one hand, when recruiting professionals, the entrance is strictly closed, and those who do not have the conditions cannot be hired. On the other hand, we should pay attention to the continuous follow-up education of existing certified public accountants. In China, the economic composition is extremely complex, new laws and policies are constantly emerging, and the audit objects and contents are constantly changing. Therefore, it is necessary to form a system so that every certified public accountant has the opportunity to absorb new knowledge and continuously improve his business ability. At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen professional ethics education, and constantly strengthen the legal awareness, responsibility awareness and risk awareness of relevant personnel, so that they have a strong professional quality, and they can not only increase the economic income of the firm but ignore the social benefits, which will bring huge audit risks to the firm.

3. Make a scientific and reasonable audit plan and implement "project division management". According to the specific situation of each audit project, the firm should make a detailed plan on the scope, focus, procedures, methods, division of labor and work progress of the audit, so that certified public accountants can follow it, have a basis for the evaluation of audit quality, reduce the possibility of omissions and avoid audit risks.

4. Establish a professional guidance mechanism to avoid audit risks to the maximum extent. The firm can establish a professional guidance mechanism to ensure that certified public accountants can get timely consulting services and appropriate business guidance when they encounter situations beyond their own knowledge. For example, experts in law, economy and technology can be hired as technical consultants for auditing, so that auditors can be backed by authoritative professionals when making judgments and decisions, thus enhancing the tolerance of audit conclusions to audit risks.

5. Make full use of autonomy and carefully select the audited entity. If a firm wants to avoid legal proceedings and effectively control and prevent audit risks, it must carefully choose the audited units. Generally speaking, before accepting the audit entrustment, you should know the nature of business, business scale and organizational structure, business situation and business risks, previous annual audits, financial and accounting institutions and other matters related to signing the audit engagement letter. If the audited entity has no integrity to customers, employees, government departments or other aspects, it will inevitably deceive certified public accountants and make them fall into the trap set by them. The firm has the right to refuse the entrustment of the audited entity to reduce risks.

6. Correctly handle the relationship between risk reduction and economic benefits. Correctly handling the relationship between risk reduction and economic benefits is another problem that every enterprise urgently needs to solve. Audit risk can be controlled, but it cannot be completely eliminated, which is determined by the uncontrollable nature of the audited object. At the same time, controlling audit risk requires a certain cost. With the increase of audit cost, the reduction of audit risk is decreasing, which requires that audit risk be controlled in an appropriate range in the economic sense.

7. Withdraw risk funds or purchase liability insurance to transfer risks. With China's entry into WTO, certified public accountants are required to provide high-quality and all-round services to customers at home and abroad, which also makes the risks faced by certified public accountants and firms different in scope and depth. In order to better serve customers at home and abroad, firms must meet new challenges with higher practice quality and safer credit conditions. Through the withdrawal of risk funds and insurance, we can improve the solvency of the firm, thus winning the trust of domestic and foreign customers and improving social reputation. The Law of People's Republic of China (PRC) on Certified Public Accountants also stipulates that accounting firms should withdraw occupational risk funds or handle occupational insurance according to 20% of their annual income.

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