L'impact des changements réglementaires récents sur la qualité perçue de l'audit : Étude exploratoire auprès des préparateurs d'information financière

The development of the recent audit regulations underline the fundamental role played by auditors. They are the guarante of the financial statement fiability to protect investors. The question of real or perceived audit quality is ont the heart of these recent regulations. This research develops an original theoritical framework established on a threedimensional conception of audit quality to understand how financial statements' preparers perceive the criteria infuencing audit quality. To analyse this problematic, the methodology developed combine a qualitative and a quantitative approach based on 131 French Chief Finance Officers. The qualitative phase leads to identify 55 audit quality attributes ranked into three themes : audit mission, audit team and regulation. The results reveal that preparers share a positive view about all the criteria. Moreover, even usual dimensions of audit quality (competence and independence) are confirmed, the study underlines criteria which are few developed by previous literature. The quantitative phase measures the relevance and the relative weight of the audit quality attributes. It also permits to identify two preparers group perceptions. The prevailing group presents an limited cognitive process based on the audit firm size ; the second shows an expended cognitive process integrating numerous dimensions.