The impact of working from home on internal auditing in the Covid-19 era.

Abstract

The world has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our habits have been challenged and many sectors have been affected by this crisis. Many states have decided to implement drastic measures in order to contain the spread of the virus such as working from home. Several employees, including internal auditors, suddenly had to work from home. The latter mainly used to conduct their audits on-site even though some of them already had to work from home. However, the COVID crisis has accelerated the implementation of remote auditing and institutionalized it. As a result, this thesis intended to investigate the consequences of working from home on internal auditing. Three aspects are developed: the remote auditing effectiveness, cybersecurity risk and the impact of distance on relationships between internal auditors and auditees. In view of literature review, it was noticed that working from home may have detrimental effects on internal auditing. To empirically study this topic, semi-structured interviews have been conducted with eleven people: internal auditors and auditees. As the outcome of this empirical analysis, it has been found out that remote auditing is less effective than traditional auditing and it also impairs the quality of relationships between internal auditors and auditees. However, this observation must be qualified because the decrease in quality and effectiveness has not been noticed in all audit types. Indeed, some audits seem to be better suited to be conducted remotely such as IT audits. Moreover, auditees’ disclosing behavior has been changed due to distance although the latter still trust auditors’ competence. Regarding IT, interviewees provided actual examples of how companies can mitigate cybersecurity risk. In conclusion, working from home has negative impacts on internal auditing but its advantages should not be neglected.