A move to preserve the ethicality of auditors and audit firms

1. A move to preserve the ethicality of auditors and auditfirms The auditors, providing audit services independently, or by working in audit firms, pursue a profession that is considered as one of the most ethical ones in the world as they need to bring forth the irregularities in the functioning of a company despite getting paid by them for providing the Singapore audit services or the non-audit services. Although a question could always arise about the preservation of their ethicality while providing the audit services, the circumstances that have taken place in the past few years in India, necessitate the existence of this question. The profession of accountancy, as well as the outsourcing accounting firms, were under the regulation of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) and the Institute of Cost Accountants of India (ICAI – CMA) until 2013. However, the revision of the Companies Act in 2013 called for the establishment of the National Financial Reporting Authority (NFRA) in response to the several corporate scams observed in the past few years. The NFRA, which could only become operational from October 2018, would be responsible for the regulation of the auditors and the audit firm, for overseeing the quality of audit services provided by the auditors and the audit firms and also for investigation and sanctioning the professional misconduct by the auditors and the audit firms. The auditors and the audit firms have always faced an ethical conflict while providing audit services to their clients. While publicizing any irregularities can develop the risk for the auditors or the audit firms of facing litigation and violating the confidentiality and the trust of the clients who’d hire them to provide the audit services, withholding such information can result in consideration of the auditor or the audit firm as legally negligent. Thus, the establishment of NFRA might help to prevent the loss of ethicality of the accounting profession and the audit firms as a consequence of this ethical conflict. Detailed information about auditing services available