| TRANSPARENCY REPORT
11
PUBLIC INTEREST COMMITTEE
the people who deliver audit truly appreciate
the worth of what they do and the fact that
how they act contributes to our wider society
and societal values. We need to empower our
people to feel that high-quality audit is not just
a firm expectation but is in the wider public
interest too. Messages from management are
important but we need to foster a culture of
supporting staff to perform and to impress
on them that they should be proud of being
in the auditing profession. More widely, the
audit market and regulator need, in turn, to
encourage auditors by promoting the excellent
work done by individuals and firms rather than
concentrating simply on very rare high-profile
failures. Obviously serious errors of judgement
or independence lapses must be addressed but
pride in the profession must be engendered to
continue to both produce high quality work and
ensure that we attract and retain talent.
The 'new' PIC has a very strong commitment
to ensuring that the culture of RSM engenders
audit quality. Feedback from staff at all levels
has shown that, not only do they think audit
quality is of paramount importance to the
firm, but that messages on key contributors to
audit quality such as scepticism have reached
the front line loud and strong. Even more
encouraging is that, not only do they believe
that challenging management is important
but they feel supported by the Responsible
Individuals (RIs) in doing so. Our staff appear
happy to ask clients difficult questions and it is
clear that the clients we want to work with are
the ones who appreciate a robust audit.
Having said this, there will always be a lot of
work to be done to ensure we deliver highquality audits. Our challenge
is to continue to
engender a culture that lives and breathes audit
quality from the Tone at the Top to the new
recruits. We need to ensure that people feel that
they are rewarded for delivering high quality
and that the appraisal system encourages the
right behaviours. We have to ensure that people
know what high-audit quality looks like and
have the skills to think critically. These cannot
just be taught in the classroom; it has to also be
gained through experience eg the whole audit
team, including the most junior, attending audit
committee meetings.