THE "CREDIBILITY CRISIS" OF AUDITING PROFFESION: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY IN ROMANIA

For decades the accountancy profession has responded to the "credibility crisis" by coining, reciting and hiding behind the phrase "audit expectation gap" - a phrase which denotes the differences between the public's and Auditors' perceptions of the role of an audit function. This paper reports the findings of a questionnaire survey on the audit expectation gap conducted in Romania. The aims of the study are to examine whether an expectation gap exists in Romania among the auditors, auditees and audit beneficiaries in relation to the auditors' duties The results proved the existence of an audit expectation gap in Romania. The study shows that the auditees and audit beneficiaries placed much higher expectations on the auditors' duties when compared with what auditors have perceived their duties to be. The analysis of the expectation gap indicated the existence of unreasonable expectations of the part of users.