The coronavirus pandemic is creating havoc with some elements of corporate regulation. One of those is the conduct of an annual audit. Some of the processes undertaken by auditors can be done remotely - such as meetings with audit committees and an examination of electronic records of transactions - but there are others that can only be done face to face.This is a material matter of uncertainty for investors, analysts and media when they dive into the financial reports of four banks in the upcoming bank reporting season kicked off by ANZ on Thursday next week.Auditors need to examine stocktake processes, look at assets, consider various aspects of internal controls and also ensure that they are able to get a physical walkthrough of business operations so they understand what, if anything, changed from the previous year. How do you talk to a client's employees face to face or examine physical hardware or records if you cannot be in the premises to observe them? You can interview people by video conferencing for some matters but this may be insufficient for the purposes of an audit where there may be other aspects of a company's internal systems that need to be examined.Firms may also have experts they use on audits that might be based on one state but a specific client is headquartered in another. Some of those elements of a job may be more complicated depending on the assets or documents that may need to be assessed.Auditors will need to consider the issue of modified audit reports because the restrictions on movement due to the coronavirus pandemic may make the completion of the audit procedures in accordance with the auditing standards difficult.That will make this an interesting period of time for those that analyse accounts that are lodged in the public domain. How will people treat modified audit reports in the current climate? Only time will tell.These issues crop up at a time while Australia still has a parliamentary wandering about looking for evidence of poor audit quality in the major audit practices. The committee, which was sparked into action by Senator Deborah O'Neill last year, has been examining: whether the quality of audit work is compromised by other work firms may do; failures within the systems of accounting firms to deal properly with breaches of internal rules; and also the extent to which appropriate monitoring by regulators takes place to ensure compliance.So we have a committee able to talk to auditing professionals in real time about what the inability to see or gather specific evidence for the audit does for the auditing process. The committee is in a privileged position to be able to quiz a profession grappling with the realities of the coronavirus as they play out in accounting terms.A high level of audit quality is not just dependent on whether an audit firm gets other work from a client. A high level of audit quality is actually dependent on whether people can see and have access to the