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The Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors (Irba), tasked with regulating the auditing profession and promoting high-quality audit and assurance services in South Africa, is planning its biggest overhaul of competence standards in more than a decade.The regulator has crafted a revised competency framework, the first since the 2013 framework.The watchdog said the proposed framework is future-orientated and expands technical competency coverage significantly to include competencies relating to sustainability and environmental, social and governance reporting; technology, data analytics and cybersecurity; and business, economic and regulatory analysis.“This expansion reflects the increasing complexity of the audit environment, where auditors are required to engage with a broader range of information, systems and reporting frameworks,” Irba said in the draft framework, which it plans to implement by April next year.“Therefore, technical competence is positioned not only as the application of the established standards, but as the ability to interpret and respond to evolving risks, emerging forms of reporting and increasingly data-driven environments.”Irba’s competency framework outlines the core technical knowledge, professional skills and ethical values required to qualify and practice as a registered auditor in South Africa and guides academic training, professional programmes and practical experience.Registered auditors play a critical role in protecting the interests of investors, creditors, other stakeholders, and the broader public and providing assurance that the financial information organisations provide is reliable and trustworthy.South Africa is not short of corporate failures, which have called the auditing profession into question. Sipho Malaba, the lead auditor of the defunct VBS Mutual Bank and a former employee of KPMG, was this year barred for life from practicing as an auditor.This after Irba described him as a “hazard” to the profession.The main charges against him related to his auditing of VBS, a company he benefited from to the tune of more than R25m in underhand loans, all the while turning a blind eye to glaring graft that cost the defunct lender more than R2bn in losses.Tongaat Hulett’s external auditor, Deloitte, faced severe scrutiny for failing to detect massive accounting fraud in 2015-18. The audit partner, Gavin Kruger, was criminally charged with fraud, and Deloitte later paid a R260m settlement without admitting liability.Steinhoff’s external auditor, Deloitte, faced intense scrutiny and regulatory investigations after failing to initially detect massive accounting irregularities and later refusing to sign off on the retailer’s 2017 financial statements.The mooted revisions to the 2013 competency framework group competencies into three areas: technical competence, enabling and professional competence.The enabling and professional competencies coverage has been expanded to include competencies that support effective performance in complex, judgment-driven and ethically demanding environments.“Practice management has also been added to the professional competence domain, recognising the importance of managing audit practices effectively, sustainably and in a manner that supports audit quality. These competencies recognise that audit quality is not achieved through technical expertise alone but through the consistent application of sound judgment, disciplined behaviours and principled conduct,” Irba said.“The expansion reflects a stronger emphasis on structured reasoning under uncertainty, professional scepticism and decision-making that is transparent and grounded in the relevant standards and evidence. It also reinforces the importance of communication, collaboration and leadership in delivering audit work that is coherent, reliable and responsive to stakeholder needs.”Irba stressed that the proposed framework has been repositioned as principles-based and outcomes-driven, with competencies expressed as observable outcomes and behaviours, rather than task lists.“They include the behavioural and cognitive capabilities that shape how work is performed, as well as the ethical and professional conduct that underpins public trust. This represents a deliberate departure from the previous framework’s binary classification of competencies as either “technical” or “non-technical”.
