L'impact de l'évolution des services de conseil dans les cabinets pluridisciplinaires sur l'audit et sur l'organisation des ces entreprises en Belgique

Abstract

Actually, consulting services represent again an important part of audit firms’ revenues in Belgium and this situation leads to some concerns expressed by specialists. To prevent from these concerns, regulators have implemented laws, which especially forbid the client’s primary auditors to provide also consulting services. These laws could reduce the auditor independence concern but do not reduce concerns about audit quality and audit firms’ culture that could be impacted by this advisory growth in multidisciplinary firms.

It is clear that multidisciplinary firms have become more complex than ever. For this particular reason, this thesis refers to discussions with partners from audit and consulting departments in multidisciplinary firms. First, this qualitative analysis permits us to conclude that audit quality is actually less impacted than expected but the stricter rules are, the more audit quality decreases. Second, internal organization is impacted by tensions linked to profit sharing and commercial strategy. Then, we have noted that audit firms’ culture is evolving about some subjects, such as giving a wider view to auditors with advisory missions, attracting potential clients with consulting services. Finally, we came to the conclusion that audit and consulting practices into a multidisciplinary firm is beneficial for both departments and the advisory growth is not impacting as much as expected these firms.