Expanding the education role to narrow the audit expectation gap: exploring the expectation gap’s existence among accounting students

Society perceives and expects more from auditor’s than what auditors can actually achieve. Society has been found to misperceive the role of an auditor, in particular, in regards to fraud, internal controls and going concern issues. Society’s differing perceptions and expectations of the auditing profession is known as the audit expectation gap. This study aims to explore the audit expectation gap’s existence among Wintec accounting students and the effect that education has on the audit expectation gap. This research intends to answer two research questions. First, does an audit expectation gap exist among Wintec accounting students? Second, what is the effect of education on the audit expectation gap? To answer these research questions, 20 Wintec accounting students have been interviewed. Ten students who have received an audit education, and ten students who have not received audit education. Qualitative data was collected from these interviews and analysed using a mixed methods approach. This study found that an audit education exists among Wintec accounting students. This study also found that education reduced the audit expectation gap, in particular, the deficient performance gap and the communication gap. However, while education did reduce the audit expectations gap, it was not eliminated. This study recommends that Wintec provides a more basic auditing education during introductory accounting papers, educating students on the role of an auditor. This study also recommends that education focuses on the practical use of an audit report, to increase student’s understandings of the information in the audit report, and how this information is communicated. Thus, the researcher believes that these recommendations will help to further reduce the audit expectation