| dc.description.abstract | In this day and age when most, if not all, industries are operating in the information technology environment, the auditors are often required to use computers, to gain access to relevant information or apply the computer-aided audit techniques. Thus the ethical issues involving both auditing and information ethics during auditing are quite different from those in the traditional auditing situations. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a new set of ethical protocols, namely, the code of computer-audit professional ethics, taking into account both auditing and relevant information ethics. Due to the insufficient related research literature, it is necessary to gather experts’ opinions to develop the code that meets their expectations and to make sure it is applicable in practice.
During the first phase of the study, the prototype of the code was drawn up based on the analysis of the related literature regarding ethical theories in auditing, current codes of auditing ethics, issues on information ethics as well as experts’ opinions. Successive collection of experts’ opinions extensively was continued by using methods of focus groups, Delphi methodology and holding public hearings, etc. It took nearly 2 years to complete the development of the code which contains the following 4 dimensions and their subordinate clauses: general rules, awareness of the professional competence, rules of conduct, and professional due diligence.
During the second phase the code was promulgated by the domestic computer-audit professional organization. And within half a year of its promulgation, a survey on its applicability was done by distributing questionnaires to a sample of 63 units, including internal audit departments of the financial institutions and their third party external audit organizations. According to the results of the survey, 44 units among them (70%) had already applied or were considering applying the code by using it as a reference to set up or improve their internal norms, to educate and train their audit staff, or as guidelines for the audit staff when conducting audit, etc. However, 8 units (13%) among them did not know how to apply it or assessed whether to apply it. The results of the survey revealed that further promotion of the code in its practical application needs to be strengthened.
The code developed, which contains both auditing ethics and relevant information ethics, can serve as supplementary norms to the existing ethical codes related to internal or external audits, to enable the auditors to follow or based on which to weigh various alternatives when encountering related ethics issues. The results of the study facilitate the understanding of the integration of academic research and the effective solving of practical related norms issues. For future studies on the application of the code, sample frame can include the listed companies as well as audit practioners.
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