The readability of international illustration of auditor's report : an advanced reflection on the compromise between normative principles and linguistic requirements

The independent auditors periodically publish reports that summarize the audit results. These reports reinforce the financial communication and reliability of accounting information. International Standards on Auditing (ISA) determine the content of audit reports and the quality of audit results. Theoretically, the audit standardization must model intelligible and clear reports for readers. Compliance with linguistic principles contributes to the improvement of the structure of audit reports. In practice, the effectiveness of these reports is criticized because users do not understand the audit information. In order to improve the content of audit reports, International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) had revised International Standards on Auditor's report: ISA 700: Forming an opinion and reporting on financial statements. Linguistically, standardized audit reports could be unreadable by many users of financial statements. This article discusses the linguistic problems related to the preparation of reports. This discussion focuses on the audit reports which are illustrated by the International Standards on Auditing. The results show that in the presence of conflicting requirements (auditing standards versus linguistic principles), independent auditors must optimize the presentation of their reports.