Determinants of Auditors’ Fraud Detection Ability in the Digital Audit Environment: A Systematic Review of Individual, Professional, Organizational, and Technological Evidence
Abstract
Fraud detection remains a core but contested responsibility in auditing because contemporary fraud schemes increasingly combine managerial concealment, complex transactions, weak governance, and digital evidence trails. This systematic literature review synthesizes evidence on the determinants of auditors’ fraud detection ability in the digital audit environment. Using a Scopus export containing 113 records and a structured screening process, the review retained 50 unique studies for thematic synthesis across four determinant domains. The evidence shows that fraud detection ability is shaped by individual-cognitive determinants such as experience, professional skepticism, red flag awareness, self-efficacy, personality traits, motivation, and time pressure; professional-ethical and forensic determinants such as competence, ethics, integrity, forensic accounting skills, professional training, management integrity assessment, and computer-assisted audit expertise; organizational-governance determinants such as tone at the top, internal audit quality, risk management, public procurement governance, corporate governance, whistleblowing, and sector-specific audit context; and technological-analytical determinants such as electronic auditing, big data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, process analytics, and full-population audit testing. The review further shows that digital tools expand the scale and speed of detection but do not replace professional judgment. Instead, technology becomes effective when auditors possess the skepticism, forensic reasoning, ethical discipline, and organizational authority needed to interpret anomalies and convert risk signals into audit action. The study contributes an integrated four-domain framework for explaining auditors’ fraud detection ability and offers directions for audit education, professional training, digital audit policy, and future research on socio-technical fraud detection systems.
Keywords: big data analytics; electronic auditing; forensic accounting; fraud detection ability; professional skepticism
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.31326/.v6i2.2933
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