Panel discussion: A multi-stakeholder perspective on audit quality and audit research

On May 9, 2016, the first day of the FAR conference, a panel discussion was chaired by professor Henriëtte Prast (Chair of the FAR Board). Four stakeholders - an audit practitioner, an academic, a non-executive director, and an audit regulator – presented and discussed their thoughts about the following issues • how to improve audit quality, • the importance of collaboration between academics and practitioners (and the role of FAR therein), • the oversight and regulatory climate, and • the stakeholder expectations of auditors. Participants welcomed the opportunity to discuss these issues with Marco van der Vegte (Head of Audit of Deloitte the Netherlands and FAR Board member), Barbara Majoor (on behalf of Authority Financial Markets (AFM, the Dutch auditor oversight body), Jan Nooitgedagt (non-executive director), and Marleen Willekens (audit researcher at the University of Leuven). In the following narrative report the interactive debate on a multi-stakeholder perspective on audit quality and audit research is presented.