Auditing Thesis - Ideas?

oopsiedaisy

Hey guys!

Im doing a masters in accounting and have to come up with a thesis idea for next week so am looking for some help!! Ive been stuck doing this all over the xmas and getting no where so hopefully some of ye will take pity on me!!

Mainly im looking at doing something relating to auditing (but not limited to it), maybe the expectation gap, role of auditors or something like that?? Im just struggling to come up with ideas as to what the objectives of my research will be.....Something interesting (if such a topic exists!) and that hasn't been done loads before. I'm not really looking to come up with a piece of serious groundbreaking research, basically i just want a topic that ill get 15000 decent enough words out of!! I do have access to some partners in one of the big 4 firms so that will probably help with interviews and questionnaires and stuff so would ideally like a topic that i could utilise these contacts for the primary research requirement. Basically if anyone could throw out some ideas to me, i would really appreciate it!!

Thanks!!!!

hivizman

I've also read your post on the Lehman/E&Y thread, and note your interest in looking at something to do with auditing and the recent financial crisis. This is actually a difficult topic to research if you don't have any inside access, because it's hard to assess whether auditors have "failed" without knowing what the auditors did, and didn't, do. You could write a general dissertation looking at the modern "risk-based" approach to auditing and how this potentially breaks down when assessment of risks is problematic, as it was in the case of many of the financial instruments involved in the crisis, such as collateralised debt obligations and credit default swaps. You could study a particular case, but the most obvious case is Lehman Brothers and the treatment of their "Repo 105" transactions - here there is little to say beyond rewriting the bankruptcy investigator's report for Lehman Brothers. You could use this case as the basis of a discussion of rules versus principles in financial reporting - there's a lot of stuff about this on the internet but I don't think it's been the basis of any academic papers yet.

Another possibility may be to look at the changing external perception of auditors. There was a paper published last year in the journal Accounting, Organizations and Society (you should almost certainly have access to this through your university library): Garry D Carnegie & Christopher J Napier "Traditional Accountants and Business Professionals: Portraying the Accounting Profession After Enron" (Vol. 35, No. 3, April 2010, pp. 360-376), in which the authors looked at how attitudes to, and stereotypes of, accountants and auditors were expressed in the large number of books that came out after Enron. You could do a similar study looking at attitudes to accountants and auditors in books about the financial crisis, and you could support this by interviewing your contacts in the accounting profession about how they perceive themselves, how they think the public perceive them, and whether the recent financial crisis has changed this.

A third possibility might be to consider the issue of auditing fair value measurements. There have been several papers and discussions on the impact of fair value accounting on the recent financial crisis, some of which have looked at the problems of measuring fair values when markets do not exist or are unreliable. The question "how do auditors actually audit fair value measurements?" could be explored through interviews with your contacts as well as looking at any published material.

Good luck with your dissertation.

slave1

i just want a topic that ill get 15000 decent enough words out of

To succeed in any dissertation you need to address your entry philosophy, the number one driver for you should be your interest in the topic not an approach like the one above. Better dissertations show interest coming through and will be rewarded. Don't forget a fair chunk of your dissertation will be marked on research methodology. Ask for, and examine in detail your marking scheme, clearly state your research questions and above all ensure your primary research addresses these questions i.e. answer your research questions clearly and concisely in a logical pattern.

Enjoy, it will be v.hard in the beginning but when complete your learning will have increased accordingly.

HeinekenTicket

Have you considered IFRS for SME, from either accounting or auditing perspectives? There's plenty of literature and discussion points and it's topical.

As a previous poster said, give attention to the methodology and methods and you'll gain marks. Few students give decent consideration to the fact that there's more than one way to answer a research question (whatever it is) so document your justification of the approach you take to answering the research question.