This 10-mark question covered the topics of auditor rights, internal control activities and limitations of external audits.
Part (a) for 3 marks required candidates to state three rights of an auditor excluding those related to resignation and removal. This question was answered well by almost all candidates with many scoring full marks.
Candidates were able to confidently state three rights and most scored full marks. Some gave far more than three rights, however as the requirement was only to state this was unlikely to have caused too much additional time pressure.
Many candidates provided irrelevant answers such as “the auditor has a right to be paid a fee” or “the auditor has a right to request information from third parties”. A common misunderstanding was with regards to meetings the auditors can attend; they have the right to attend shareholder or general meetings but not board meetings.