Purpose-The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which accountants, internal auditors, and certified fraud examiners use fraud prevention and detection methods, and their perceptions regarding the effectiveness of these methods. Design/methodology/approach-A survey was administered to 86 accountants, internal auditors and certified fraud examiners. Findings-The results indicate that firewalls, virus and password protection, and internal control review and improvement are quite commonly used to combat fraud. However, discovery sampling, data mining, forensic accountants, and digital analysis software are not often used, despite receiving high ratings of effectiveness. In particular, organizational use of forensic accountants and digital analysis were the least often used of any anti-fraud method but had the highest mean effectiveness ratings. The lack of use of these highly effective methods may be driven by lack of firm resources. Practical implications-Organizations should consider the cost/benefit tradeoff in investing in highly effective but potentially underutilized methods to prevent or detect fraud. While the costs may seem prohibitive for small organizations, substantial cost savings from reduced fraud losses may also be significant. Originality/value-By identifying methods that work well for fraud detection and prevention, prescriptive information can be provided to accounting practitioners, internal auditors, and fraud examiners.

Information technology (IT) use can directly impact audit judgment and ultimately audit effectiveness and efficiency. Although IT has significantly changed the audit process, few studies have examined the perceived importance of IT use across a diverse group of audit firms. Our descriptive study explores audit IT use and its perceived importance across several audit applications. To address regulator concerns about barriers to entry in public accounting and to advance auditing research, we examine whether audit IT use and perceived importance of IT varies by firm size. A field-based questionnaire was used to collect data from 181 auditors representing Big 4, national, regional, and local firms. Our results indicate that auditors extensively use a variety of audit applications including analytical procedures, audit report writing, electronic work papers, Internet search tools, and sampling. Auditors perceive several applications as important (e.g., fraud review), but use them infrequently. In addition, IT specialists use is infrequent, even by auditors who examine clients with complex IT. Finally, findings suggest that audit IT use and perceived importance vary by firm size. These results describe audit IT use, but do not allow us to infer causality.

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We provide data on the extent to which computer-related audit procedures are used and whether two factors, control risk assessment and audit firm size, influence computer-related audit procedures use. We used a field-based questionnaire to collect data from 181 auditors representing Big 4, national, regional, and local firms. Results indicate that computer-related audit procedures are generally used when obtaining an understanding of the client system and business processes and testing computer controls. Furthermore, 42.9 percent of participants indicate that they relied on internal controls; however, this percentage increases significantly for auditors at Big 4 firms. Finally, our results raise questions for future research regarding computer-related audit procedure use.