Materiality permeates the audit process and is a term often
used to describe the scope of the auditor’s responsibility to the general
public. This paper attempts to evaluate the Maltese auditing
profession’s perceptions and use of the concept of materiality in the
performance of an audit as well as attitudes towards disclosure of
materiality thresholds. Results from personal in-depth interviews
with twenty-four practitioners show that although considerable
importance is attached to qualitative aspects of materiality, professional
judgment is applied to establish quantitative materiality thresholds.
Practitioners in Malta do not seem to treat materiality uniformly, with
various materiality thresholds applied in practice. Nevertheless,
prescriptive guidelines are not advisable. The proposal of disclosing
materiality thresholds to reduce the omnipresent expectations gap
was strongly rejected. It is the authors’ view that such disclosures,
need to be adequately regulated and users would need a proper
understanding of materiality and audit methodologies.peer-reviewe
