A longitudinal study of applicable decision aids for detailed tasks in a financial audit

This paper reports on changes in the extent to which decision aids are perceived to be useful for performing detailed financial audit tasks. The decision aids investigated were automation (AU), decision support systems (DSS), and knowledge-based expert systems (KES). Data were collected from highly experienced mangers and partners from various international accounting firms in 1988 and 1996. The participants were asked to select the decision aid they viewed as applicable for each task in a comprehensive inventory of audit tasks. While the data indicate an increase in the choice of tasks for decision aids use between the two years, the fact remains that a majority of the responses (79% in 1988 and 69% in 1996) indicated human processing (HP) only. We present a list of detailed tasks for which at least 50% of the responses indicated some form of an applicable decision aid in 1996. We also discuss implications for practice and research. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.