FAR Research Project: What do we know about group audits?

Despite concerns about the quality of group audits, recently raised by practice, inspectors, regulators, and standard setters, only a limited number of academic studies have specifically examined these engagements to date. This paper first describes some of the concerns about group audits to explain why research in this area is important and has the potential of providing a valuable contribution to practice. Then, we review the limited extant research available on group audits. Following, we present an overview of our own ongoing research project “Coordination and Communication Challenges in Global Group Audits: Evidence from Component Audit Leaders”, in which we examine (1) the determinants of coordination and communication challenges, (2) the degree to which the strategies described mitigate such challenges, and (3) how, ultimately, component auditors' perceptions of engagement performance are affected. We finalize the paper with a discussion of possible implications of our research for practice.