Straight from the Horse’s mouth: Auditors’ on Fraud Detection and Prevention, Roles of Technology, and White-Collars Getting Splattered with Red!

Abstract

Fraud is increasingly an enormous problem for organizations all over the world today – the losses occurring due to fraud are over several billion dollars every year alone (Smith, 2008). In this article, we provide a thorough review of the extant literature on fraud, and conduct a qualitative interview (N=18) based study on forensic auditors’ perceptions of fraud detection and fraud prevention methods, as well as their impression of the role of technology in fraud. We then highlight a rarely addressed problem – that of physical safety concerns that forensic auditors have to face while investigating fraud investigations. We finally suggest some directions for further research.