AUDITORIA EXTERNA EM ORGANIZA ES DO TERCEIRO SETOR: UM ESTUDO DA PERCEP O DE CONTADORES E N O CONTADORES

This study aimed to identify the perception of accountants and non-accountants regarding the possible contributions the Independent Audit prints on reliability and transparency of financial statements of Third Sector Organizations, and see if there is a significant difference between the perceptions of these two groups. The independent audit is a technique performed by professional independent organization that verifies whether the financial statements were prepared in accordance with prevailing accounting standards and principles. It is a tool that subsidizes management techniques, project design, strategic planning and fundraising, an instrument of corporate governance. In the Third Sector organizations, a public performance of the institutions of civil society that is scoped to the public good, one realizes the need to improve the reliability and transparency in the financial statements, since obtains resources from the private sector, government and individuals to finance their activities. In seeking to answer the question of this research, the following methodological procedures have been adopted: a review of the literature relevant to the topic, the application of a questionnaire to a sample accessibility to graduate students in the areas of accounting and finance, accountants and no counters in the city of Salvador, Bahia. In data analysis, the scale "Degree of reliability independent audit" was validated according to their dimensionality, reliability and convergence. By analyzing the descriptive statistics, there was a high degree of reliability in the independent audit for the two groups. Then the univariate analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) confirmed no significant difference regarding the perceptions analyzed, thus confirming the initial analysis of the descriptive statistics. We conclude that accountants and non-accountants assign a high degree of credibility to external audit to improve the reliability and transparency of financial statements of nonprofit organizations, also checking that there is no significant difference between the perceptions of accountants and non-accountants. These findings point to the need for further investigations in other regions of the country, from the scale built and validated.