Nurturing auditing students' professional attributes at an open distance learning institution

Abstract

The research set out to describe how professional attributes (PAs) can be nurtured during the teaching and learning of auditing technical content in an open distance learning (ODL) environment. First the research described the necessity to include PAs in the academic programme. This was followed by describing the relevance of PAs during the performance of an audit and identifying and describing the PAs that an entry-level registered auditor are expected to demonstrate. The main categories of PAs identified were: professional demeanour, critical reasoning and communication. The University of South Africa was selected as the ODL institution and data were collected through individual interviews with auditing lecturers and a focus group discussion with auditing students. Tesch’s open method of descriptive coding was used for data analysis. Generic recommendations to nurture PAs and specific recommendations to nurture professional demeanour, critical reasoning and communication while teaching and learning auditing technical content in an ODL environment were proposed.