Revisorns användande av experter och dess påverkan på komfort

Sammanfattning: The modern auditor is, because of an increased complexity, dependent on the use of experts. Simultaneously different scandals have occurred where the auditor in fact have been using experts. Although the auditor is using an expert, the auditor alone is responsible for the statement that the expert makes. Research simultaneously indicates that the auditor’s use of experts is a difficult task. Because of the scandals that have occurred and that research in this specific area is limited it would be interesting to investigate the affects on comfort. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the auditor’s use of experts affects comfort. To fulfill this purpose, this paper builds on a deductive approach. A model have been developed based on previous research containing various factors such as; Risk, “structure/judgment”, “trust”, information asymmetry and auditor overconfidence. This model has been empirically tested through the use of interviews with auditors and experts. The results from this study indicate that the use of experts have a positive affect on the auditors perceived comfort. The conclusions drawn indicate, among other things, that the customer perspective is a vital part in the auditor’s work and that this seems to have an affect on comfort. This study also is considered to demonstrate the importance of the concept trust for the creation of comfort. It has also appeared that the auditors’ control of the expert evaluation sometimes is inadequate. The contributions made by this paper is mainly that it illuminates an area that is relatively unexplored, as no earlier research seems to have investigated the use of experts from a comfort perspective. This paper also contributes in highlighting the problems with the auditor’s lack of controlling the expert, when the auditors mission is to bring comfort to the public