Auditor’s Perceptions of Financial Reporting Quality: The Case of Greece

Abstract

According to IASB a key prerequisite for quality in financial reporting is the adherence to the objective and the qualitative characteristics of financial reporting information. Qualitative characteristics are the attributes that make financial information useful and consist of relevance, faithful representation, comparability, verifiability, timeliness and understandability. This paper aims to investigate auditor’s perceptions of the quality of financial reports based on the qualitative characteristics of financial reporting information defined by IASB in its conceptual framework. In addition, it aims to identify the key factors that influence and improve the quality of financial reports, as well as the factors that lead to poor quality. Finally, an effort is made to assess the quality of financial reporting of Greek companies according to each qualitative characteristic of financial reporting information. Results indicate that auditors perceive the qualitative characteristics of financial reporting information as important quality elements of financial reports. As far as the quality of financial reports of Greek companies is concerned auditors perceive it to be of moderate quality attributed mainly to earnings management, poor corporate governance, family ownership and deviation from accounting principles.