The Role of External Auditor to Reduce the Effects of Creative Accounting on the Reliability of Financial Statements: Insights from Libya

This study offers some important insights into clarify the role of external auditor in the limiting of practices the creative accounting and methods of manipulation practiced by the administration in the financial statements and the reasons and motives of this manipulation, as well as the statement of the most important tools that can be used to reduce the effects of the manipulation of the beneficiaries of the financial reporting, and to achieve this goal has been distributed (129) questionnaires were distributed on a random sample of certified public accountants in audit offices and licensees for them to auditing the Libyan companies as well as a number of internal auditors inside these companies. where, 103 of them answered the questionnaire, which represent (79.9 %). Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to generalize the results and conclude the findings. The study concluded to that the reliability of financial statements, neutrality, honest representation, possibility of verification, ethical values a significant impact the reliability of financial reporting. Where it was clear that the external auditors have spent enough effort to apply of methods and procedures adopted and act with a reasonable care in conducting an assignment.