Auditability in the digital age

Michael Power

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: In this Perspective essay, I offer some provocations about the future of auditing. I suggest that auditing is currently undergoing technological change in its practice unlike any other in its history in which notions of evidence and auditability have become fluid. The pervasiveness of algorithms in auditee systems necessitates that auditing itself becomes algorithmic in nature. Although there may be considerable efficiency benefits from this, there is a risk that auditing becomes ‘platformized’ as one app attached to auditee systems. This in turn implicates the non‐independence of the evidentiary basis of the audit. At the extreme, auditing becomes algorithmically self‐referential, and the human auditor is reduced to the ‘de‐skilled’ curator of analytical models and their decisions. At the same time, the underlying algorithms remain beyond auditability and human comprehension. I suggest that scholars have an opportunity to explore these processes empirically and that practitioners and professional institutes need to be vigilant about the side effects of technology in auditing. They must nurture the human‐centric and dialogic nature of the practice in the face of these changes.

Keywords: auditability; audit evidence; transparency; datafication; algorithm; artificial intelligence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 L86 M41 M42 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 7 pages
Date: 2026-04-26
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in International Journal of Auditing, 26, April, 2026. ISSN: 1090-6738

Downloads: (external link)
https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/138062/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:138062

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().