THE CHALLENGES OF AUDITING IN A COMPUTER ENVIRONMENTS
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Human being, either young, old, literate and illiterate are all product of their various environment i.e. the environment (internal or External) affects them either positively or negatively, even their work and inputs into anything, due to the rational and unpredictable nature of man, that makes them react to stimulants.
Before considering, the reaction towards auditing, auditing can be traced back to the ancient times where the receipts and payments of an estate or a manor were read to the lord or proprietor, or the head of a manor. It began more like a stewardship kind of dealings, where houses are entrusted into the hand of caretakers, who report to the landlord at the end of every month, etc. the origin of the word auditing is from a Latin word “Audire” (meaning to hear). At the beginning, the dealing was a kind of a sole – proprietorship business, since it involves a landlord and a steward/caretaker; but with industrial revolution, there was an increase in business transactions, which ushers in partnership, and other forms or types of business. Hence, financial transactions becomes much and the whole processes becomes complex and required more formal and improved accountability.
Considering the issue of audit reaction to the computer environment, it becomes proper to note that prior to the new era (computer) audit had already been in practice, though in a traditional/manual environment, as such, there are bound to be either challenges or prospects in the change to computer environment. This holds to the fact, that human beings react to changes in either positive or negative way, and they constitute the most important resources, in an organizational setup.
Over the years human beings had been used to a particular audit environment and it has become part of their routine work; so introduction of a new thing could and could not be a problem, irrespective of its future contribution, but as a result of human level of adoption to new things.
Hence, the starting point is how fast or slow, the organizations members of staff adopts to new policies, where this is in place, then the challenges and prospects can now be determined.