PEL

The prospective firm must communicate with the outgoing auditor to assess if there are any ethical or professional reasons why they should not accept appointment i.e. ask the existing auditor to provide known information on any facts or circumstances that, in the existing auditor’s opinion, the proposed auditor needs to be aware of before deciding whether to accept the engagement.

No list of matters is set out in the letter to the outgoing auditors other than “Are you aware of any ethical or professional reason why we should not accept the appointment?” Usually the answer is imply “We are not aware……”. If there were some issue then that would have to be explained eg “We have doubts over the integrity of management because they did not supply us with all the information we required for our audit”.