Professional auditing pronouncements

The  purpose  of any auditing guide-line  is to provide  auditors  with an authoritative pronouncement of the profession's recommended contempor­ ary auditing practices.  An auditor's careful adherence to recommended practices  should   help  to safeguard   not  only  the  interests  of  the  client company  and  users of the audited  financial statements, but also those of the auditor himself. To achieve these objectives, auditing guidelines must always reflect the contemporary law. If a guide-line fails in this regard, any auditor who complies, in all conscience, with  the guide-line  may  potentially find himself to be in a position of legal  difficulty. Clearly such an outcome would hardly  be the fault of the auditor, but this fact would be of no comfort to him when facing a negligence suit in a court of law.