A Comparison of Judgement, Skills, and Prompting Effects between Auditors and Systems Analysts

Abstract

Arguments have been made supporting internal auditor involvement in the systems development process - arguments based primarily on the differential skills that auditor are thought to possess in the evaluation of internal controls. This study investigates whether internal auditors possess such skills. A second objective is to investigate the impact of recall versus recognition in the identification of control weaknesses and control measures. Two major findings are reported. First, no consistent between group differences in different aspects of internal control evaluation were found. Second, a significant prompting effect was shown across all three respondent groups.