Question

Review the PCAOB’s Five-Year Strategic Plan (the PCAOB-approved 2018–2022 strategic plan). This s... Review the PCAOB’s Five-Year Strategic Plan (the PCAOB-approved 2018–2022 strategic plan). This strategic plan details five core goals along with supporting objectives to improve the quality, reliability, and transparency of auditing and financial reporting. Select one specific objective outlined in the strategic plan. In your own words, describe the purpose and goals associated with this objective. Explain how the elements of the PCAOB’s strategic plan will impact your role as an accounting or auditing practitioner.Based on the input we received and our own analysis, we have identified the following four primary strategic priorities for 2018-2022: • Effective Oversight. We will drive continuous improvement in the quality of audit services and more clearly communicate our assessment of the quality we observe. • Innovation. We will be more innovative in our oversight activities—particularly with respect to our approach to inspections and standard setting—and at the same time prepare for significant market-driven changes in the audit profession. • Improved Engagement. We will engage more often and more directly with a broader array of investors, as well as with audit committees, preparers, and our other stakeholders to promote robust and timely dialogue regarding the quality of audit services. • Process and Culture Optimization. We will optimize our operations and enhance the culture of our organization.

Answer 1

Anticipate and respond to the changing environment, including emerging technologies and related risks and opportunities.

In this dynamic changing environment and daily changes in technologies and for multiple transaction over the internet is a challenging thing for an auditor.

Now the question arises is that how a person needs to keep a check on each and every transactions or audit at large when there is no audit trail is present or is impossible to find out the trail as most of the transactions are now done online . Thus keeping and auditing is a hard task.

Thus to outperform others and to prove one self a person needs to advance his capabilities in executing a truly digital audit. he must leveraging and learn the use of new digital audit platform and and there usage and advantages in auditing. Such data analytics throughout the audit helps to  develop an even deeper understanding of a business and its financial reporting, enhance ones ability to perform the  risk assessments and obtain better-quality audit evidence as well as better and deep audit in the required time which not only increases efficiency of company but it will also help auditor to point out the things which is not possible in a manual audit. It also means using emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain. All of teams of audit must learn such new technology and learn and use such audit platforms to apply in audit methodology and manage their day-to-day audit work which will not only save time in just vouching but the team and managers will be able to focus on much important areas and requirements. the teams can use new technologies and audit platforms to communicate securely with management and track their requests for information and the responses they receive as audit evidences. Such audit platform is the foundation of audit technology. all around the world such audit teams must use it to apply to  audit methodology and manage their day-to-day audit work. This global platform better enables the audit teams on multinational audits to communicate with the teams from different member firms and monitor their progress in the audit. Such features simplifies the communication with the companies to audit, enabling teams and the companies to audit to receive real-time updates. Such data analytics can be embedded in every significant aspect of an audit, regardless of size.the auditors can use them to analyze full populations of data generated by the companies we audit.

This will not only improve the efficiency of auditors but will be able to give more output with more accuracy as to say 100 %.

Thus digital audit helps a the auditor as well as in various ways such as :

1. Digital reporting

2. Artificial intelligence

3.Large scale workings

4. Large scale automation

5. Minimising human or manual interference.

6. Generation of various reports as and when required.

7. Helping in compliance with the government and regulatory bodies.

8. Analysing risk as well as scope.

9. It helps in analysing the transactions done by the company such as payroll, purchases and sales, revenues and expenses.

10. Graphical and accurate analysis can be done on a click of a button.

11. Analysis of balance sheet, statement of profit and loss as well as ratio analysis real time.

As a result, the auditors can more readily identify risks and concentrate on focusing on the most important risks in an audit rather than collecting data. Professional skepticism and the quality of audit evidence are increased with this information more readily available . To accelerate the use of technology in the audits, Auditor must approach some suitable digital platforms so that they can incorporate such digital platform in their audits. Big organisations have a specialized team of data and audit professionals who focus on enabling the audit teams to effectively implement the digital audit technology which helps the audit teams capture and use the data produced by the companies to audit. eams on large public company audits have incorporated the use of these analyzers into their audits.

investment in such technology is an advantage to auditor as well as company. Use of such emerging technologies and to proactively address technological changes at the companies to audit helps to improve from both the sides.. Using the tool will help us more readily identify key provisions in contracts and allow the professionals to spend more time analyzing the data and focusing on the related audit risk. Such analyzing helps the  audit teams gather an organization’s entire transaction data from multiple blockchain ledgers, reconcile the data with what is in the company’s records and identify items for follow-up. New approach for understanding business processes is the use of digital techniques. reimagining the audit to drive a deeper understanding of key business processes and the risks on which we need to focus. the new approach will incorporates team-based analysis of end-to-end business processes and the related risks and controls. With that understanding, teams will be asking management better questions and focusing our procedures on the most important risks. Through these meetings, the senior executives are taking the opportunity to provide even more timely on-the-job coaching and supervision as the work is being performed. This enriches the experience of the people and enables them to resolve issues early in the audit and significantly simplified how to document the procedures. Rather than using long-form narratives, now the  documenting the risks and responsive controls in flowcharts that enable will to more readily pinpoint risks. realizing the benefits to audit quality of this new approach is much needed.