The Quality of Audit Process: An Empirical Study with Audit Committees

TLDR

Recent scandals such as Enron and Batam exposed the inadequacy of traditional audit methods and metrics, prompting a shift toward process‑level quality control endorsed by Tunisia’s financial security law. This study aims to develop measurement scales for audit process quality applicable to audit committees and other governance bodies. Using Churchill’s approach, the authors designed and validated a 27‑indicator scale across three process stages through qualitative and quantitative phases based on two research questionnaires.

Abstract

The recent financial scandals (Enron in the USA, Batam in Tunisia) showed the inability of classic approaches and their measure indicators to estimate the relevance of audit works. We consider that the audit quality control must reside at the level of audit process. This position is adopted by the financial security law in Tunisia which encourages the evaluation of the audit quality, by the audit committee. The objective of this paper is the construction of measurement scales of the audit process quality for audit committees or for other governance organ concerned with the audit quality. The conception and the validation of this measurement scales were done on the Tunisian ground by adopting Churchill approach. Articulating qualitative phases and quantitative phases based on two research questionnaires, this approach developed a scale of 27 quality indicators distributed on three stages of the process.