Conclusion
This paper contributes to the understanding of how
external auditors rely on the work of internal auditors by
analyzing the applicable professional standards and research
findings. The decision aids resulting from these
analyses should assist external auditors with their evaluations
of internal audit staffs and reliance on their work performance.
Corporate management who wish to reduce
external audit costs by maximizing external auditor reliance
on internal auditing should also benefit from these
analyses and decision aids by knowing how to strengthen
their internal audit function.
Preliminary versions of the decision aids contained in
Tables 2–5 were sent to representatives from five international
CPA firms and feedback was received from all of
them. The feedback resulted in some wording changes
for these decision aids. The general consensus from the
feedback is that the CPA firms consider factors similar to
the ones appearing in the decision aids, but they do not
quantify evaluations with numerical ratings. Some of the
comments received were as follows:
‘‘What you put together is a very useful tool . . . Ours is
more subjective and doesn’t assign a numerical scale,
but considers the same types of things. This approach
is good in that it is very thorough.”
‘‘In general it makes intuitive sense. Would probably be
a good CYA tool to help mitigate regulatory and legal
risk as it demonstrates our considerations, etc.”
‘‘While our firm assesses internal audit competence and
objectivity, we do so in a qualitative manner and do not
have a quantitative decision aid such as this. Our decision
aids consider similar criteria to what you suggest
above for both competence and objectivity. We evaluate
internal audit’s work performed, however, in a less specific
manner.”
‘‘We use similar factors as outlined in the decision aids
for our assessment but we have not translated our factors
into a quantitative rating scale . . . the decision aid
could be helpful for giving a uniform method of weighting
the factors vs. now leaving it entirely up to professional
judgment.”
‘‘We do use a decision aid, but it is more qualitative
compared to quantitative . . . these decision aids would
be extremely helpful in the decision process as to
whether or not to rely on internal audit.”