Assessing the Reliability of the Internal Audit Functions: The Issues

This paper examines the issues in internal audit reliability. It specifically provides conceptual and practical insights into some of the consequential issues worth pondering about when assessing the reliability of the internal audit functions. Particularly, the paper identified and discussed four (4) of such issues namely: competency of internal auditors, level of management support/influence, independence and objectivity of internal auditors; and regulatory issues. The paper took a conceptual approach and draws its basis from the institutional and protection motivation theories. Based on literature and other documentary evidences, the paper took the position that the four identified factors would most likely influence the internal audit reliability. Among other policy implications, the paper, therefore, proposes a conceptual research framework to be empirically examined by future researchers.