CPA FIRM'S CLOUD AUDITING PROVIDER FOR PERFORMANCE EVALUATION AND IMPROVEMENT: AN EMPIRICAL CASE OF CHINA

While CPA (Certified Public Accountant) firms utilize cloud auditing technologies to generate auditing reports and convey information to their clients in the Internet of Things (IoT) Era, they often cannot determine whether cloud auditing is a secure and effective form of communication with clients. Strategies related to cloud auditing provider evaluation and improvement planning are inherently multiple attribute decision making (MADM) issues and are very important to the auditor industry. To overcome these problems, this paper proposes an evaluation and improvement planning model to be a reference for CPA firms selecting the best cloud auditing provider, and illustrates an application of such a model through an empirical case study. The DEMATEL (decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory) approach is first used to analyze the interactive influence relationship map (IIRM) between the criteria and dimensions of cloud auditing technology. DANP (DEMATEL-based ANP) is then employed to calculate the influential weights of the dimensions and criteria. Finally, the modified VIKOR method is utilized to provide improvement priorities for performance cloud auditing provider satisfaction. Based on expert interviews, the recommendations for improvement priorities are privacy, security, processing integrity, availability, and confidentiality. This approach is expected to support the auditor industry to systematically improve their cloud auditing provider selection.