Developing a model of influential factors for fraud risk assessment in Iran

Trust among traders is one of the bases of markets mechanism and fraud damages existing trust. Therefore, the deleterious impact of fraud on societies and companies is obvious. When fraud occurs, the society expects auditors to detect and report fraud. Therefore, the role of auditors in countering fraud has become increasingly significant. To detect fraud, auditors need to perform a high-quality fraud risk assessment to identify high-risk areas and allocate audit resources to those areas. So, the lack of research in this field has led researchers to identify factors affecting fraud risk assessment using theme analysis method. In the present study, 16 auditing experts were selected through Purposive sampling and snowballing in May and June 2019 and were interviewed. The findings of the interviews were extracted in code and a model tailored to Iranian conditions is presented to conduct a more effective fraud risk assessment. We depict, in this model, the sum of the factors affecting the task in three general categories of individual factors, macro environmental factors and micro environmental factors, which each of them includes more minor factors, and the relationship and interaction of each extracted category. Finally, each of the effective pillars in the task of fraud risk assessment, including the association of certified accountants, auditing firm, audited company, auditors, government, etc., can take a more effective step in fraud risk assessment through the advices provided by experts.