If you rely on audits to protect your organization from fraud, you may be in dangerous territory. Internal fraud is detected very rarely by external auditors.
There is a common misperception about the role, function, and effectiveness of financial statement audits as a tool to uncover fraud. The accounting profession is as responsible for this misperception as anyone, due to their marketing of the service and justification for their fees. Nevertheless, the perception that financial statement audits are designed to find fraud and that they are effective in that pursuit is pervasive. The fact is that neither is true. (click here for complete article in HTML or PDF formats).
Reprinted with permission from http://i-sight.com/
