A CFO I met recently told me his team closed the books early last year and celebrated for a few days. Then came six weeks of back-and-forth with the external audit team over revenue cut-off. "We thought we were finished," he said. "The auditors thought we just started." That gap, between how a business sees its numbers and how an audit sees them, is where this article lives.
Our teams at Baker Tilly UAE sit across the table from finance functions in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, the DIFC and ADGM every year, and the same findings keep resurfacing, dressed differently each time. None is alarming alone. Together, they say governance has not kept pace with growth. A finding is not a synonym for fraud, it means the auditor couldnot find enough evidence that a control, judgement or disclosure was as solid as management believed.
Why Auditor Findings Matter More in 2026
UAE regulation has tightened fast. Listed insurers must now obtain a review opinion on internal controls, and the DFSA's ninth Audit Monitoring Report recorded a 74% jump in DIFC audit fees, to US$33.5 million. Additionally, the implementation of Corporate Tax has increased supervision over financial reporting and compliance resulting in a spike in audit requirements. As a result, audit findings carry greater regulatory, tax, and reputational consequences than ever before.
Surprising insight: paying more for an audit firm in UAE doesnot buy fewer findings. IFIAR reports that 35% of inspected audits carried at least one finding in 2025, up from 26% in 2022.
The Top 10 Auditors Findings Keep Flagging
- Revenue booked before it is earned remains the top IFRS 15 cut-off finding, especially where an IFRS compliance policy has not kept up with a growing contract and failure to sufficiently understand the terms and conditions of complex arrangements and the impact on the accounting.
- Related-party transactions are disclosed too thinly, especially in UAE family business governance where decisions happen around a table, not on paper.
- Controls that exist on paper but were never tested. A binder is not evidence, exactly the gap internal controls requirements target.
- Property valuations that lag a fast-moving market.
- Expected credit loss provisioning built on historical defaults alone, understating real risk assessment.
- Inventory on the system but not the shelf, due to infrequent reconciliation process.
- Corporate tax, deferred tax and transfer pricing position taken without enough supporting evidence.
- Going concern assumptions leaning on shareholder support never formally committed.
- Group structures where consolidation adjustments arrive late and nobody owns the picture.
- AI-assisted audit evidence without a clear supervision trail. Regulators are not asking whether AI was used, but how it was supervised, governed and evidenced.
Surprising insight: the same technology meant to strengthen audit quality is generating its own finding category. It proves that innovation without documentation and controls just relocates risk.
Here is the sentence worth sitting with, an unqualified opinion is not a clean bill of health. An independent audit opinion means the numbers are fairly stated. it says nothing about whether the business is built to last.
The Real Cost Behind a Clean Opinion
Weak findings rarely stay in the finance function. Banks price debt off reporting quality, investors discount valuations when governance looks improvised. Under DIFC and ADGM reporting requirements, expectation is shifting from compliance to demonstrable process. ICAEW's 2025 Audit Monitoring Report found 73% of audits reviewed were rated good or acceptable, up from 67% a year earlier. Quality audit outcomes move when root-cause analysis becomes routine, not remedial.
Surprising insight: the fewest findings do not always mean the best governance. ACCA's research on AI-accelerated deception suggests it's the direction of travel, not the headline number, that shows whether controls are strengthening or gaps are just better hidden.
What Boards, CFOs and CEOs Should Do Differently
Boards should treat the management letter as a leading indicator, not a filing obligation. A repeated finding is a governance signal before it's a financial one. CFOs should close the gap between documented and tested controls, building audit compliance into monthly discipline, not a year-end scramble. CEOs should recognize that repeated findings are rarely an accounting problem, more often, they are a leadership problem in disguise. Every business should stop counting findings and start timing how fast last year's stop reappearing, that shift is what UAE corporate governance increasingly rewards.
How Baker Tilly UAE Can Help
The businesses that thrive under the UAE's tightening governance regime wo not be the ones with the fewest findings on file. They will be the ones that treat every finding as a message worth acting on. The audit report is not the end of the conversation with your auditor, it is where the more useful one begins. At Baker Tilly UAE, we work alongside audit committees, CFOs and family business boards across the UAE, turning audit findings into stronger governance, not just cleaner opinions. If your last audit raised a question that never quite got resolved, we would welcome that conversation.
Get the best from your Auditors not just a compliance check.
Statistics referenced:
- DFSA Ninth Audit Monitoring Report (July 2026)
- IFIAR Survey of Inspection Findings 2025
- ICAEW Audit Monitoring Report 2025
- ACCA, Combatting Fraud in a Perfect Storm (2025).
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