| Summary: | The Act on Annual Accounts No. 3/2006 requires that the board of directors of the public-interest entity in question appoints members of an audit committee. The Audit Committee handles some of the tasks previously held by the Board of Directors and is responsible for ensuring the quality and reliability of financial information, whether reports to the company’s management or to stakeholders outside the company. The existence of audit committees is therefore directly linked to good governance. Audit committees, on the other hand, have not been studied in Iceland enough, even though they play an important role in corporate governance. Audit committees handle work that corporate boards previously had on their desk. The article is based on two studies, one from 2018 and the other from 2022, where external auditors participated in a questionnaire and in a focus group. A comparative study has not been conducted before in Iceland, where the environment is audit committees. This comparative study includes the attitude of external auditors towards audit committees, e.g., whether audit committees have increased transparency and trust in companies’ financial information, according to the participants. The participants discuss, among other things, the concepts of trust and quality in the context of audit committees. At the same time, there is discussion about committee members’ preparation for meetings, discussions, and their effectiveness, and finally, suggestions and contributions for improved external auditing. The research question is whether auditors’ attitudes towards audit committees in 2022 have changed from 2018 and possible explanations explored. A comparison of the results of these two studies, 2018 and 2022, indicates that there are changes in the attitude of external auditors towards the procedures of audit committees. To scrutinize individual issues, such as expertise, transparency and trust, a focus group was obtained from among the participants in the 2022 survey. The results of the two studies show a ...
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