Auditing as Independent Authentication

During the 1960s and 1970s a remarkable series of books was produced by academic staff in the field of accounting at the University of Sydney.

It was a period when academic research was largely analytical rather than empirically-based. For the most part, the interests of academics at Sydney were largely directed at questioning the status quo – either in the way accounting or auditing was practiced, or in the conventional wisdom expressed in textbooks of the time.

The Sydney Accounting Classics series reflects the diversity of interests of the 'Sydney school' at that time. It also recognises the tremendous impact of the foundation professor of accounting, R.J. Chambers. This reprint series ensures that the ideas developed during this period remain available to new generations of scholars and researchers.

The Sydney Accounting Classics series is an initiative of the Accounting Foundation, in association with Sydney University Press.

Auditing as Independent Authentication:
From the cover of the 1987 edition: ‘This is a penetrating exposition of the role of auditing in controlling quality of the financial information on which any interested person may assess the performance and prospects of firms’.

Peter W. Wolnizer is professor emeritus of accounting at the University of Sydney. He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2011 for service to higher education in business and economics as an academic and administrator.

Raymond J. Chambers was the foundation chair of accounting at the University of Sydney from 1960 until his retirement in 1983. He was widely acknowledged as one of the leading academic contributors to the study of accounting. He passed away in 1999.

Foreword to series
Foreword
R.J. Chambers
Preface
Table of statutes
Table of cases
Abbreviations

1. The domain of quality control and auditing
2. The truth of a matter
3. Quality assurance and the function of auditing
4. Technical ophelimity, fitness for use and the function of accounting
5. ‘Correspondence with the facts’: a recurrent theme in commentaries on the statutory quality standard of truth and fairness in accounts
6. The conventional accounting notion of independence: an idea in a groove
7. Technical knowledge and professional judgement

Bibliography
Index of names
Index of subjects

"[The author] takes a different approach to a long-standing challenge to the basis of accounting presentation. Whether his flinging down of the independence gauntlet will get the auditors to join in the fray remains to be seen."
Frederick Neumann   The Accounting Review

‘The book is a welcome addition to the auditing literature and should appear on the bookshelves of all serious students and practitioners of auditing.’ – Review of the 1987 edition published by Sydney University Press
Prem Sikka   The British Accounting Review