Q.Mr. Sen has just been appointed as the new statutory auditor of Bengal Textiles Ltd., replacing Ms. Roy, who audited the company for the previous five years. Mr. Sen is keen to begin the audit immediately and considers it unnecessary to contact Ms. Roy, since he has already received the engagement letter from the company. As a student of auditing, advise Mr. Sen on whether skipping this step is appropriate, and why. (This is supplementary practice content — the real Semester III paper for this unit is 100% MCQ; Case Problems here build the deeper apply-the-rule reasoning the MCQ format cannot test.)

Having the client's own engagement letter is not a substitute for a completely separate professional obligation Mr. Sen still owes to the outgoing auditor.

Section a lists communication with the previous auditor as its own separate preparatory step, independent of obtaining the letter of appointment. Mr. Sen having one does not excuse him from the other.

Mr. Sen's reasoning conflates two entirely separate preparatory steps described in Section a: obtaining the letter of appointment from the client, and communicating with the previous auditor. These serve different purposes and neither substitutes for the other.

The letter of appointment confirms, in writing, that the client has engaged Mr. Sen and on what terms — it is the client's own formal confirmation. Communicating with Ms. Roy, the outgoing auditor, is a distinct step rooted in professional courtesy and due diligence: it gives Mr. Sen the opportunity to learn of any professional reasons the appointment should not be accepted — for instance, an unresolved dispute with the company's management, concerns about the reliability of its records, or any other matter a departing auditor might reasonably flag to their successor.

Skipping this communication risks Mr. Sen accepting an engagement blind to information that could materially affect how he approaches the audit, or whether he should have accepted it at all. It also falls short of the standard of professional conduct expected of an incoming auditor, since this communication is a recognised professional courtesy within the auditing profession, not merely an optional formality tied to paperwork the client has already supplied.

Mr. Sen should therefore contact Ms. Roy before proceeding, in addition to (not instead of) having received the company's letter of appointment, completing this preparatory step properly before the detailed audit work begins.

Students sometimes treat all the preparatory steps in Section a as interchangeable or redundant with one another. Each step serves a distinct purpose — receiving the client's own confirmation of appointment does not fulfil the separate professional obligation of communicating with the outgoing auditor, and completing one does not excuse skipping the other.