Study on the Impact of Digital Transformation on Audit Risks of Accounting Firms: The Case of Grant Thornton

Abstract

As the external environment changes, digital transformation is becoming increasingly necessary for accounting firms. Firstly the '14th Five-Year Plan' for the development of the digital economy emphasizes the importance of accelerating the digitalization of the industry. Secondly audit plays an important third-party supervisory role in the capital market and the volume of audit engagements has been growing in recent years, but the corresponding increase in audit risk due to manpower shortage, lack of time and limited resources. Finally the outbreak of the new crown epidemic reveals the problem of unenforceable on-site audits, which affects investor effectiveness and capital market efficiency. Therefore, it is important to study the impact of audit risk in accounting firms from the perspective of digital transformation to promote the digital transformation of accounting firms. In this paper, we take the example of Grant Thornton, which has a long history of development, comprehensive business lines, and is a pioneer and leader in promoting digital reform among domestic accounting firm, and is representative in digital reform. This paper firstly reveals the advantages of digital audit in the digital economy by comparing traditional audit and digital audit; secondly, it analyzes the impact mechanism of digital transformation on audit risk in accounting firms; then it examines what measures accounting firms can take to reduce audit risk, improve audit efficiency and save audit cost in the context of digital transformation. Finally, the problems of digital transformation of accounting firms are explored, and corresponding suggestions and measures are proposed. This has important guiding significance for promoting digital reform in the audit industry.