Outsourcing the Internal Audit Function: A Survey of the UK Public and Private Sectors

Although not a new phenomenon on the business scene, outsourcing nowadays is occurring on a much broader scale and often encompasses a wide variety of traditionally in‐house activities. Whether, however, the practice of outsourcing the internal audit function is occurring on the scale and extent that has been often depicted, is an issue open to debate. This paper reports the results of a questionnaire survey carried out in the UK public and private sectors on the issue of outsourcing internal audit. The authors believed that some degree of hesitancy is present among organisations when it comes to outsourcing the internal audit function. This is supported by the survey findings which indicate that organisations which have embraced outsourcing and have entrusted the provision of a broad range of services such as cleaning, information technology and security to outside service providers, are not so keen to outsource the internal audit function and instead are keeping it in‐house.