Does APES 110 stop our audit firm from helping us?

Not entirely. APES 110 prohibits your audit firm from assuming management responsibility, and prohibits non-assurance services that create a self-review threat for a public interest entity audit client. Advice, training and review of work you prepared and own may still be possible, but preparing the disclosure itself generally is not.

Can our auditor prepare our climate report?

Usually not, and it turns on whether they will also assure it. Preparing a disclosure you later assure is a self-review threat under APES 110, and for a public interest entity that threat cannot be reduced to an acceptable level, so the service is prohibited. Other entities need a case-by-case assessment.

Does our preparer need to be independent of our auditor?

No rule requires your preparer to be independent. The rule runs the other way: your assurance provider must be independent of what they assure. In practice that means the preparer and the assurer cannot be the same firm or network, so the preparer must sit outside your assurance provider.

Glossary›Assurance, audit evidence and working papers›APES 110

Glossary term

Cluster A · A10

Tier 1 · differentiator

APES 110

Definition

APES 110 Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants (including Independence Standards) is the ethical standard binding Australian accountants and their firms. It contains the independence rules that determine what services an assurance firm may provide to a client it assures. An amending standard covering sustainability assurance took effect on 1 January 2026.

APESB

· APES 110, Amending Standard for Sustainability Assurance and Reporting and the use of External Experts, issued 8 July 2025, effective 1 January 2026 · in force, with optional transitional relief

On this page

In practice
What the assurer does with it
Commonly confused with
Timing and relief
Sources
Related terms
Related questions

Cluster

A · Assurance, audit evidence and working papers, 47 terms

In practice

APES 110 is issued by the Accounting Professional and Ethical Standards Board and binds members of CPA Australia, Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, and the Institute of Public Accountants. It is not legislation, but the Corporations Act and ASIC’s registration requirements make compliance practically mandatory for anyone doing statutory assurance work.

The July 2025 amending standard extended the Code to sustainability assurance specifically, importing the international ethics standards for sustainability assurance and adding requirements for the use of external experts. Optional transitional relief is available for sustainability assurance engagements in two tranches. The APESB provided transitional relief in tranches when the sustainability amendments commenced. Check the current tranche dates with the practitioner, because they determine when the full independence provisions apply to your engagement.

For a CFO the operational content of APES 110 is narrow. It tells you what your assurance firm cannot do for you, and it is the reason a proposal from your audit firm to also build your emissions inventory should be queried rather than accepted.

What the assurer does with it

The firm applies APES 110 at engagement acceptance and continuously afterwards. If circumstances change mid-year, for example the firm’s consulting arm wins unrelated work that touches the emissions data, the firm must reassess. Entities are sometimes caught by a service they did not think was relevant, such as a systems implementation that ends up producing the emissions data.

Commonly confused with

The Corporations Act independence provisions in Part 2M.4, which are separate and narrower. Both apply.

Timing and relief

The Amending Standard for Sustainability Assurance and Reporting and the use of External Experts was issued 8 July 2025 and took effect 1 January 2026. Optional transitional relief is available for sustainability assurance engagements in two tranches; confirm the current tranche dates with the practitioner, because they determine when the full independence provisions apply to your engagement.