This study examines how a paradigm shift from traditional to digital audits could affect the audit expectation gap. It uncovers possible new areas of the expectation gap and threats and challenges resulting from this paradigm shift.

The findings suggest that audit digitalization will result in the profession transitioning from the defensive approach of educating users on auditors’ duties to a constructive approach of using digital tools to perform some of the duties that users expect of auditors. Digital technologies have the potential to enhance internal controls and facilitate fraud prevention and detection, thus narrowing the expectation gap with these critical issues.

The potential benefits of switching to the constructive approach include lower costs for audit firms, enhanced audit quality, and improved client perceptions of auditors.