Spain’S New Educational Requirements For Licensing And Continuous Professional Development Of Auditors

After passing the amendments to the Spanish Audit Law in 2010 and the promulgation of the subsequent By-law in 2011, access requirements to the audit profession, as well as auditors continuous professional development, incurred many changes. This paper analyses such changes by clarifying not only its causes but the future effects that it may induce in reaching the public interest that the profession is searching for. Some of the most relevant decisions have been the following: mandatory university master courses to learn the theoretical bases of accounting and auditing, detailed schedule of the three-year period of practical training, two of them with a professional auditor, and case studies reflecting near to real life situations, including ethical conflicts, in the final exam. Regarding the continuous professional development, it has been established for the first time that auditors must participate in an average of 40 hours professional development per year. Nevertheless, there are some doubts about the possibility of enforcing this obligation by the auditor’s bodies’ in order to help the public oversight authorities in reaching this goal.