Are the knowledge areas covered by dedicated internal auditing programmes currently offered by South African public universities meeting expectations?

Abstract

The role of internal auditors has changed especially dramatically over the last 20 years, with resultant challenges to their formally acquired competencies. In response, the internal auditing profession regularly updates its competency framework and its global internal audit curriculum to reflect these developments and the changing expectations of internal audit’s stakeholders, including those relating to the required knowledge areas. Very little research has been done on internal audit education in South Africa, and no studies have focused on identifying and understanding the knowledge areas being covered in higher education institutions. This article explores the latter by identifying the knowledge areas currently being covered by dedicated internal auditing programmes at South African universities, determining whether the expectations of global internal audit stakeholders regarding internal audit knowledge requirements has similarities with the expectations of their South African counterparts, and establishing whether they are being met by formal internal audit education programmes offered by South Africa’s publicly funded higher education institutions. A content analysis of knowledge areas covered by these South African universities’ courses was performed. A similar analysis was performed on the secondary data contained in the 2010 CBOK survey, in order to determine stakeholders’ knowledge requirement expectations. A comparative analysis was then carried out using the university programme content analysis and the secondary data’s indications of stakeholders’ expectations. The study found that the South African programmes cover nearly all the knowledge areas of the profession’s competency framework and globally recognised internal audit curriculum, which generally correlates with the expectations of internal audit’s stakeholders internationally and in South Africa. It was further revealed that South African internal audit stakeholders’ expectations and rankings of the importance of the official knowledge areas do not differ significantly from those held by stakeholders from the rest of Africa, and that stakeholders in Australia and North America display similar tendencies, also without statistically significant differences.