In a good percentage of the cases, externa auditors may not be said to be completely independent; this is because, organizations that hire them and pay them to a large extent influence their audit outcome and depending on the clime they operate, or the type of audit concerned, audit independent opinion may only be held on in the minds of the professionals.
A complete audit independence that resulted in a qualified audit report may also result into loss of audit assignment, so to keep their jobs, external auditors may more often than not, not qualify a report but could append a technical disclaimer where very necessary.
This is not the way of sound external audit process, so to ameliorate this issue, audit professionals should have their fees paid either by government or their professional bodies, this may imply a centralized audit assignment source and deploy but could create fundamental job problems to some auditors and may also make some organizations (especially the small and the very small ones) to not get the services of external auditors and therefore may lead to loss of tax revenue by the government.