Can auditors be insightful, transparent?

New standards introduce changes to increase value of audit reports

WOULD you perk up if told that the independent auditor’s report – most of us know it as those two pages in a company’s annual financial statements in which the auditors give their opinion on the accounts – would be very different 18 months from now? Probably not. From time to time, the spotlights swivels to the auditors when people question the reliability of audited corporate results, but we are otherwise indifferent to what the auditors do.