21st CenturyAuditing:Advancing Decision Support Systems to Achieve Continuous Auditing

The use of decision support systems is widespread in the auditing profession. Decision support systems (DSS) are intended to improve decision quality, expedite decision-making processes, decrease the amount of effort required for effective performance, free valuable cognitive resources, and train novices to form expert-like judgments. DSSs commonly employed by auditors include electronic workpapers, automated decision aids, checklists, pre-defined audit tests and procedures, and expert systems designed to share expertise with novice auditors. In this paper, the authors offer thier vision of how existing, emerging, and future DSSs hold the potential to transform auditing in the future. They have developed a pyramid of DSSs originating with mining and continuous monitoring of data and culminating with meta-level DSSs. They suggest that help is on the way in the form of decision support systems aimed at making the audit more efficient and effective.