Ethical threats and safeguards. The case of statutory auditors in the Gdansk region

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify ethical threats faced by Polish statutory auditors in their professional work and the methods of counteracting these threats, i.e., safeguards ensuring compliance with ethical principles of statutory auditors. Methodology/Approach: Survey research was conducted among 45 statutory auditors from the Regional Branch of the Polish Chamber of Statutory Auditors in Gdansk with the aim of identifying the types of ethical threats and safeguards in the practice of Polish statutory auditors. Findings: Based on the research, it was found that among all types of ethical threats indicated in the survey, statutory auditors indicated the risk of familiarity as the type with which they most often deal. The risk of intimidation was ranked second on the list of threats. When it comes to safeguards used by the audited auditors, they primarily indicated two types, i.e., principles and procedures that enable the identification of interest and business relationship between the firm, the personnel and the client, as well as rotating senior assurance team personnel. Originality/Value: Our study fills the gap in the Polish literature in the field of research on the types of ethical threats in the work of statutory auditors and the safeguards they use. We have audited the occurrence of individual types of ethical threats and assessed which of them appear most often in the practice of statutory auditors, threatening the ethical attitudes of statutory auditors. Our study also enriches the literature by presenting the types of security used by Polish statutory auditors to comply with ethical principles