Question

Jason Choi is a member on the audit team of Samson Ltd. Jason's husband Kai was recently hired to work at Samson Ltd as the marketing and events manager. Kai has extensive experience in hospitality and his role involves approving purchases/orders, receiving goods from suppliers and requesting those suppliers are paid in a timely manner. He will have organised 2 events in the financial year to be audited. The audit firm Jason works for has many audits happening at the same time that need staff.

• A.

  No safeguard required - Jason can still work on the audit

• B.

  Kai should quit as the marketing and events manager of Samson Ltd

• C.

  Jason should be removed from the audit team of Samson Ltd

• D.

  Jason should be limited to only auditing areas of the accounts where Kai has no access.

Answer 1

Step 1

Answer to this Question is 'D'

That Jason should be limited to the area where Kai has no access.

This is requirement of ISO 9001 standards, which requires that the auditor must be independent of the activity being audited, be free from bias and conflict of interest, maintain an objective state of mind throughout the audit process and ensure that audit findings and conclusions will be based only on the audit evidence.

As such for keeping the impartial and unbiased audit, audit team member should not conduct the audit where his or her close relation is working.