L'éthique de l'auditeur: entre théorie et pratique

Abstract

Ethics belonged for a long time to the world of philosophy. Currently, ethics spread through any sector of our society. Problems linked to this social phenomenon and especially linked to business ethics appear increasingly. Besides, the financial crisis called the quality of the work realised by auditors into question. The financial audit sector was particularly harmed by those events. Therefore, several countries established new regulations in order to improve the image of the profession.

In that way, the professional ethics rules were strengthened for the members of the profession. In this master thesis, entitled “The auditor’s ethical behaviour: between theories and practice”, we aim to clarify what components defined the auditor’s ethical behaviour in theories and then analyse which of them has a real influence on the auditors’ behaviour in practice.

After clarifying the conceptual framework of our problematic by defining the main concepts relating to auditors and ethics and describing the legal basis of the auditor’s ethical conduct, we expose the components of the auditor’s ethical behaviour found in scientific literature. Subsequently, we go deeper into the subject through one-on-one interviews with auditors in order to identify the real intervention of the components in the professional ethical reasoning.

Our findings of the theoretical and practical researches show that independence, confidentiality, reasoning skills and the compliance with the rules and procedures are raised both by scientists and auditors. However, professional skills and professional conscience only appear in the definition given in the scientific literature. Besides, we discover that many factors have an influence on the auditor’s ethical behaviour such as gender, professional experience, age and personal values.