THE EXTERNAL FINANCIAL STATEMENT AUDIT PROCESS AND BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY

Authors : Graham GAL, Matthew SHERWOOD

Pages : 103-140

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Publication Date : 2021-07-31

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :`This study examines the relationship between the financial statement audit process and blockchains. While clients’ use of blockchain technology might provide some benefits to external auditors’ substantive testing procedures, those benefits appear very limited, and an increase in controls testing effort is likely to offset any reduction in substantive audit effort. This is due to blockchain technology’s inability to provide assurance regarding most of the financial statement assertions external auditors test. The study notes that many of the purported benefits of blockchain technology to the auditing profession, such as the ability to test a full set of transactions and the potential for real-time auditing, existed before the development of blockchain. Thus, while blockchain is likely to have some effect on the auditing profession, it is hard to say to what extent that impact might be.
Keywords : Independent Audit, blockchain, internal controls