BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY AND ITS IMPACTS ON THE INTERNAL AUDIT ACTIVITIES: OPPORTUNITIES AND THREATS

Though the technical and legal regulations and international standards were not clearly defined yet, blockchain is a rapidly developing technology throughout the world. Both public and private sector are in hot pursuit of this newly emerging technology and it is expected to create radical changes in existing business processes. The transformation caused by this technology which has a consistantly expanding field of application since the first emergence in 2008, is predicted to affect the fundamental functions of internal auditing: audit and consulting. The most outstanding advantages of this technology are transparency, immutability, eliminating intermediaries and the favorable infrastructure for continuous auditing. Besides these advantages, it has some shortcomings such as the complexity of governance structure, difficulty in understanding the concept, the potential for diminishing the dependancy on the audit, problems in integration with the existing systems and insufficient resources of talent. It is so critical for internal auditors to have adequate knowledge on blockchain technology for taking the maximum advantages of the opportunities offered by this technology and for managing the risks as proper as possible. Another critical action is taking an active role in the transformation process for especially facilitating control design. There are many researches on some specific topics of blockchain technology such as technical infrastructure of blockchain, use cases, advantages and disadvantages, potential impacts on existing business processes and sectors but the researches about the potential impacts on audit profession are very limited and mostly focused on accounting. In this paper, it is aimed to provide a wider perspective on the potential impacts of blockchain technology to the audit activities while referencing these limited researches and with the basic characteristics of blockchain