Internal audit effectiveness, what can we learn from external auditors?

Details

Supervisors

Sarens, Gerrit

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de gestion

Abstract

The internal audit has gained a lot of importance during the last decade and is therefore not just seen anymore as a financial and accounting tool used in the companies, but as a major element in the governance of the company. In a world of constant evolution and expansion, the companies and organizations are confronted to new risks every day. The main contributions of the internal audit are to help the CEO finding these risks and therefore prevent the company of exposing itself to major danger. However, many more tasks and roles have been allocated during the last years to the internal auditors and challenge the internal audit effectiveness. The primary objective of this paper is to investigate the significance both audit professions ascribe to several topics, which have an impact and influence on the internal audit effectiveness notion. How do the internal auditors consider internal audit effectiveness? Can we learn some important insights from the external auditors and translate them into the business operations of the internal auditors? We will try to find an answer to these questions during our analysis and further develop two research questions.