Paper Title
Awareness And Understanding On Environmental Audit Among Professional Accountants
Abstract
Environmental audit is considered as a new field among the auditing scholars and considered as a new approach
in public sector auditing (Yusoff, 2013). Hillary (1998) mentioned that environmental audit does not represent a specific
purpose but is associated with human activities and programs. In fact, International Auditing Practice Committee 1995
(IAPC, 1995) stated that, an environmental audit require more attention by auditor even though there is no clear
interpretation related to environmental audit. Therefore, auditor is not only required to understand an environmental audit but
instead should have a better understanding of implementation of environmental laws and regulation to enable that such laws
and policies have been implemented efficiently and meet ultimate objectives of organization. Note that environmental audit
could be one of risk management mechanism for organization in assessing compliance with environmental legislation. In
addition, it could be a baseline for organization to avoid the risk of prosecution and fines arising from potential environment
breaches. Therefore, it is vital to promote environmental audit from the internal audit perspective among companies in
Malaysia. This study will first investigate the awareness and understanding on environmental audit. To the best of our
knowledge, this will be the first study in its kind in the Malaysian context. Second, this study will also examine
environmental performance, which could be attributable to the awareness and understanding on environmental audit and
firm-specific characteristics.
Keywords- Environmental audit; Awareness; Understanding; Professional accountants