Course description

Title of the Teaching Unit

International Standards of Auditing

Code of the Teaching Unit

22MRE40

Academic year

2024 - 2025

Cycle

Number of credits

Number of hours

Quarter

Weighting

Site

Montgomery

Teaching language

English

Teacher in charge

VAN HOOF Eric

Objectives and contribution to the program

General objectives
The objective of the course is to get the students familiarized with the framework of the International Standards on Auditing issued by the IFAC through the IAASB and to get them to understand the reach of audit opinions and the work performed by audit professionals to come to these audit opinions. The ultimate goal is to prepare both potential audit professionals and potential users of audit opinions to understand the role of the auditor in the current international context.
The course pursues an objective of students acquiring a conceptual but also practical knowledge, through illustration with lots of practical cases from the teacher’s day to day experience.

Contribution to the learning profile
At the end of this course unit, the student will need to be able to show his/her understanding of the framework of the International Standards on Auditing and other services issued by IFAC (ISA,ISRE,ISAE, ISRS, ISQC1 standards and ethical standards) and be able to explain the audit assignment performed by a financial auditor and the reach of the audit opinion in that context. He/she must also understand the general risk approach, both conceptually (using the risk formula) and practically (based on case studies). The student should also be capable of having a critical judgment on examples of non-complying audit opinions.

Competency Goals :

CG 1 Disciplinary Knowledge
CG2 Operational
CG3 Responsible
CG4 Open to the world
CG5 Aware of complexity / Critical Mind

Prerequisites and corequisites

None

Content

The following subjects will be treated:
- Presentation of IFAC and the history of the standards
- Framework of the standards as issued by IFAC through the IAASB, when and how these standards are used including practical examples of real-life opinions and reports
- Standards on ethics
- Quality Control standards
- Planning of an audit
- Risk identification and risk assessment
- Auditing techniques
- Audit evidence
- Sampling methods
- Documentation of an audit
- Audit reports ; different types of opinions
- Materiality/ Tolerable Error and audit adjustment levels
- The auditor’s role and responsibilities with regards to fraud
- Auditing in a complex IT environment
- The auditor’s role and responsibilities in terms of going concern
- Using the work of others (external auditors, internal auditors and experts)
- The specific Belgian context and new European Regulation (2014 Audit Reform)

Throughout the teaching of these concepts, practical examples and case studies will be performed based on real life cases taken from the day to day experience of the teacher. A similar case study is part of the exam.

Teaching methods

Ex cathedra courses and case studies during the lectures or as pre-work to the lectures.

Assessment method

Formative evaluation
Given the limited number of students, the evaluation will happen through participation of the students in the case studies.
Summative evaluation
Written exam in three parts :
1) Five open conceptual questions in order to test the conceptual understanding of the student
2) Ten multiple choice questions testing the conceptual understanding of the student in a practical situation
3) Case study through which the student will be able to demonstrate on a real life case his understanding of the assimilated concepts. The student will be asked to develop a critical risk analysis on a specific company and its incidence on the work of the auditor, to determine the materiality levels, identify significant accounts and determine which type of audit report should be issued based on a number of given audit adjustments.
Part 1 and 2 count for 5 points each, part 3 for 10 points.
Oral exam for second attempt due to the very limited number of students presenting the exam in June and August.

References

Learning material

- Slides presented and distributed during the course and downloaded on the ICHEC Moodle site;
- Coordinated ISA standards, freely available on the website of IRE and IFAC
www.ibr-ire.be, http://www.ifac.org
- Case studies presented and distributed during the course and downloaded on the ICHEC Moodle site;
- Lexicon (list of key terms), freely available on the website of IRE and IFAC
www.ibr-ire.be, http://www.ifac.org

Documentation
- Handbook of International Standards on Auditing, Assurance and Ethics Pronouncements, 2015 Edition, Part I, II & III, IFAC (non-mandatory support)