The impact of Big Data on the audit profession. A research in the Italian and Belgian context

Abstract

In the new era of digitalization and technological change, characterized by an increasingly complex and high-volume data environment, the rise of Big Data and Analytics has brought new possibilities, but also new challenges to auditors. Since the audit profession has been always perceived as “static”, due to the strongly regulated environment characterized by precise standards to follow and limited to less than 100% of the entity’s items, the use of new forms of analytics techniques has increased the chances to perform better audits. Hence, the aim of the research thesis is to provide a contribution to the literature on how Big Data and Big Data Analytics are transforming the audit profession, trying to understand to what extent their emergence have changed the audit profession and to recognize if they represent a big opportunity or an unforeseeable threat. The methodology used to perform the research is qualitative, based on semi-structured interviews made to some European auditors, belonging to different Big Four audit firms across Italy and Belgium. The interviews have been carried out via e-mail, mobile phone or via video call. What emerges from the experiences and insights given by the auditors interviewed partly confirms the general consent expressed by the literature: Big Data and Analytics have brought a significant change in the way of doing audit today, giving access to a higher amount of data (100% of population sample), ameliorating the quality of the audit evidence and of the service, reducing the risk of potential frauds. However, some threats that have been identified by the literature, for instance a problem of privacy deriving from the full access to the client’s data, or the integration of unstructured data in the audit procedures, seemed not to hamper the audit procedures, even though they were considered to be relevant. Eventually, the research aims at providing a different insights on the matter, focusing on the audit scenarios of two European countries, which from one side, are similar, as they are subject to the same international standards to follow, but from the other side, they could differ in their approach towards the recent technological revolution of auditing.