Components Constituting the Audit Expectation Gap: The Vietnamese Case

The present study seeks to investigate the degree of awareness that constitutes the audit gap expectations (AEG) to determine which audit responsibilities can be narrowed or even eliminated. The author had surveyed a sample comprising four groups including auditors, auditees, the financial community, and other interest groups. In this survey, 1400 questionnaires were sent to the respondents, and the total number of responses was 454. The collected data was processed using statistical software SPSS, version 22. The Chi-Square test was used to analyze the effect of professional differences on AEG. The results of this study indicate that AEG cannot be eliminated due to the occupational impact of each survey group (about 46%), but it can be narrowed down to 54%, including a reduction of 11% in the knowledge gap (lack of public knowledge), 13% in the reasonable expectations gap (unqualified audit quality), 30% in the deficient standards gap (limited auditing standards). These results could be attained by improving training, communicating, and adding more responsibilities. This is the first study that provides another method of measuring the contribution of the knowledge gap through professional differences and professional gaps that make up each of the AEG's components.