Compromised quality of audit practice do have a devastating impact on the development and sustainability of an economy, as the professional accounting and auditing service is subject to adherence to professional standards and legal...
moreCompromised quality of audit practice do have a devastating impact on the development and sustainability of an economy, as the professional accounting and auditing service is subject to adherence to professional standards and legal provisions; however literatures indicated that there exist situations in which the audit found to underserved its purpose as it was found that companies that reported an unqualified audit report demonstrated performance contradictory to the report and resulted the consecutive failure of the auditors in the recent past.(Anlop &Chandla, 2003). This has been repeatedly mentioned as the underpinning rational for examining the effectiveness of auditors' independence from different perspectives. Studies on auditors' independence and its effect of actual audit quality and users expectation gap are useful to inform regulatory bodies and the accounting profession in devising ways to enhance auditors' independence and the role in corporate governance. The purpose of this exploratory study is to review existing empirical studies on auditors independence to developed a theoretical framework that facilitate further studies in least underdeveloped audit market. The study is conducted based up on review of literatures and identified the factors that possibly influenced perceived independence of auditor. Introduction Following the accounting scandals and failure of large companies in the developed counties like Enron in the USA and others (Anlop &Chandla, 2003), the issue of auditors' independence has become the concern of regulatory bodies, investors and the accounting profession itself. It is not arguable that weak or lack of auditors' independence impairers the quality of the audit profession and diminishes the public trust on auditor's assurance. The professional code of conduct at international and local levels as well as the commercial codes that govern the business and economic endeavors stated that professional accountants must be competent and independent to undertake an audit and assurance services. Independence takes the central place in audit profession as lack of independence is interpreted as " […. ] the auditor is hardly likely to report breach of the contract between principals (shareholders and lenders) and agents (managers) " (Fearnley and Page, 1994, p. 7; as cited on Roger and George, 2001). Further, weaken independence of external auditor is a serious challenge for the government bodies that make tax liability assessment and regulatory duties on the basis of audited financial reports. In general the purpose of external auditors in society is to give reasonable assurance on fairnes the truthfulness of financial statements. As stated by Lavin (1977:237), in order to perform their role, it is essential that, auditors are independent of the client company and are not seen to have any motive for none disclosure of misleading information. The concept of independence is very important in enhancing the contributions of the audit profession to the sustainable development of the overall economy and the issue has becoming a discourse of academics, professional and regulators in developed and emerging economies, studies addressing the issue in Ethiopian and other least developing countries audit market context are scantly available. Unlike studies in developed countries, few of the previous studies in developing countries were not motivated by notable failure of companies and audit firm scandals, but they indicated that there is a frequent appeal of major financial statement users such as taxing authorities and banks that are in a difficult situation of accepting audited financial reports as a credible and dependable for financial and economic decisions. In this regard Delu (2007) who studied audit expectation gap in Ethiopia found that there was agreement between auditors and users of financial statements that the auditor must act independently; however, both also expressed their doubts on the practical applicability of independence. The underdevelopment in the audit infrastructure was also mentioned by police makers at Ministry of trade and Industry among the possible challenges speeding up investment and economic development in Ethiopia (MOI, 2005). The current momentum to establish publicly owned companies in Ethiopia is also considered as the need for examining auditors' independence. However, there is no publicly known corporate failure and audit scandal in Ethiopia, the possible lack of independence may bring it into existence to hamper the ongoing private sector development and economic growth that has