Abstract:
The study sort views from professional Accountants, Auditors and IT experts employed in NCPB with an aim understanding the factors that has affected the adoption of forensic auditing commonly referred as forensic type phase in Government Institutions in Kenya, a case study of NCPB. Since the introduction of forensic auditing in the year 2004 in NCPB, audit function development has not evolved progressively in line with universal changes in the auditor’s role, the auditing environment and auditing technology. The study attempted to investigate how IT development strategy, auditors’ independence, training and development of auditors and government audit policy affect the adoption of forensic auditing in an audit process. The study employed both survey and explanatory research designs while seeking to describe and analyze the effects caused by independent variables on the dependent variable. Systematic random sampling incorporating dispersion and representation factor approach was adopted to draw samples from the target population of 300 staff members whose study area was within all the six NCPB regional offices with a target sample of 171 staff members from Finance and Internal Audit departments. The reliability and validity of the research instruments was tested through the use of Cronbach alpha which established a reliability coefficient of 0.169. Data collected were analyzed by use of regression analysis, analysis of variance and descriptive statistics. The study findings were summarized and presented in pie charts, tables and figures with an establishment that the government audit policy has the highest influence on the adoption of forensic auditing as depicted by calculated standardized coefficients (beta) which are at (0.258),followed by training and development of auditors (0.169),then auditor’s independence (0.142) and lastly IT development strategy (0.107).The study indicates that for the forensic auditing to be adopted then government audit policy should be entrenched in the institutional audit frameworks before other factors are incorporated as per their order of contributory importance.
