From Traditional Audits to Digital Audits: A Systematic Review of the Impacts and Driving Factors

Abstract

The rapid diffusion of digital technologies has fundamentally reshaped the way organizations generate and report financial and non-financial information, challenging traditional audit approaches that rely on manual and sample-based procedures. Building on this context, this paper aimed to provide a comprehensive synthesis of empirical evidence regarding the impact of digital technologies on auditing and to identify the key factors influencing their adoption across internal, external, and public sector audit functions during the 2015–2026 period. Using a qualitative descriptive design and a systematic literature review guided by the PICOC framework and PRISMA protocol, 33 relevant articles indexed in Scopus were selected from an initial pool of 959 publications. The findings showed that the use of various technologies, including computer-assisted audit techniques (CAATs), audit analytics, big data, artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, blockchain, and process mining, generally enhanced the effectiveness and efficiency of audit procedures, strengthened internal controls, and reduced errors and financial statement restatements, while simultaneously repositioning auditors as more strategic and data-driven partners. At the same time, the success of digital audit transformation was strongly influenced by technological infrastructure, data governance and security, organizational capabilities, leadership support, regulatory environments, and auditors’ individual competencies, indicating that digitalization was neither a neutral nor an automatic process. This study provides practical implications for audit firms, internal audit units, supreme audit institutions, and regulators in developing more targeted and sustainable digital audit strategies, while also proposing future research directions concerning the organizational and institutional dynamics of digital auditing.