Blockchain Technology and the Impact on the Auditor's Work in the Future

Abstract

There is no doubt, that the world is changing and we are becoming more and more digitalized. Throughout all industries, we see a constant desire to effectivization and smarter ways to do our job. One way to do this, is by implementing the use of blockchain. The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate what impact the blockchain technology will have on the auditors work in the future. Firstly, we start out by explaining what the blockchain technology is and what it can be used for. There are many possibilities with this technology, as it basically makes it possible to transfer data from one block to another, with a high level of security. The interesting part for this thesis is the use of blockchain alongside the company’s ERP systems, because this will change the way an audit is performed in the future. If blockchain is used as a base when companies trade together, all transactions from that will automatically be verified and the same across companies, which will to some extend eliminate the need for an audit. The big question is, whether this will eliminate the need for auditors and make them unemployed, or it will open the doors for new tasks. We believe that it is inevitable that the knowledge and education of auditors will need to change to reflect the use of new technologies. After explaining how the technology works and what possibilities we see in using the technology, we have analysed on the expectations to this new technology, based on interviews performed with both auditors and Danish companies who has some kind of knowledge of blockchain. We believe that the expectations to the technology is an important factor when assessing whether this technology will change the future, because if the expectations to the technology is low and the general attitude is negative towards implementing the technology, we would most likely see that the technology would be dismissed and forgotten. The thesis closes with a conclusion on how the future will look for Danish auditors if this technology is implemented in Denmark.