CA/CM has been discussed in the auditing profession for
many years, since the initial work at AT&T in the early
1990s.15 The survey conducted among CAEs in 2007
examined the levels of application of CA in business.
Although it found a high rate of CA adoption, a large number
of participants in the survey reported that they performed
audit manually. Furthermore, they defined monthly and
quarterly audits as frequencies of continuous audit. This
survey predicted an increase in CA/CM in the ensuing five
years, evolving responsibilities of auditors and a globalization
effect relative to the auditing role.
With a different approach, the CARLAB study classified
the manual audit process and periodic audit as a traditional
audit, producing a different evaluation of CA/CM adoption.
Most of the companies in the CARLAB study were classified
in the emerging stage of CA adoption. The reason for not
including them as full continuous audit adopters was that they
had only partial audit automation and some key monitoring
on a regular basis.