THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL AUDIT

Analyzing the evolution process of internal audit, from its beginningsand so far, we can easily notice that internal audit function was born throughdetaching of some activities from external audit, the result being that there somesituations when these two functions could be easily confused. The reality is thatinternal audit and external audit are two distinctive functions; net differenced, butwhich are also characterized through some complementary relationships. In thispaper, we try to give our contribution at the clarification of the similarities anddifferences between these two functions, making a literature review that allowed us toidentify some very interesting studies that permitted us to emphasize the maincriterions that influenced the relationship between internal audit and external audit.