Interrogating The Roles Of Auditors In Checking Fraud: A Study Of Selected Public And Private Enterprises In Nigeria

Owing to several accounting scandals and people's perceptions of the accounting profession, critics of the profession have argued that when asked by a client “what does two plus two equal? The accountant would likely respond — what would you like it to be? The accountants have been seen as puppet in the hands of clients to be used in manipulating and perfection of account. The public that could benefit from the activities of an auditor think of auditing as a checking function carried out as a clerical operation. Management tends to share views with the general public that the auditors' duties are to count the petty cash, spot dummy workers and detect fraud. Two variant situations emerged when the functions of auditors and the requirements of corporate reporting are placed face to face. The former is confirmed to economic action while the latter is the outcome of a wide range of economic event. An auditor is expected to cross the desired limit in order to bring about the desired level of improvement in the field of financial reporting to restrict themselves to their terms of reference. They are expected by the public to work effectively so as to help improve the quality of an organization's financial statements. To this end, this paper investigates the role of auditors in checking and detection of fraud in both public and private organizations. The study attempts to find answers to the following questions: What is the relevance of audited reports to private companies, government parastatals, stakeholders, and users of such reports? To what extent is an audit exercise truly independent of the management? Is auditing fulfilling its role in financial reporting system of the entities with respect to various standards, regulatory bodies and a sound professional ethical background? The study administered 120 questionnaires, 60 each, to both the private and public enterprises. The descriptive and inferential statistics were used to test the hypothesis. The study, however, concluded that the auditor's function is to check fraud and other irregularities and has the responsibility to determine the future prospect of an organization.