Auditors' technical, digital, and creativity skills and their role in supporting audit outcomes in light of digital transformation strategy

The ability to ingeniously include aspects of surprise in audits is a requirement of the auditing profession (Herron and Cornell, 2021). So, the study investigates the Auditor's Technical, Digital, and Creativity Skills and their role in supporting the Quality of Audit Outcomes in light of digital transformation: An external auditor perspective. The study used partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to test the hypotheses. A questionnaire was distributed from two hundred sixty-three auditors from small and medium-sized Jordanian auditing firms, comprising the study sample for data analysis. The study's results proved that the auditor's technical, digital, and creativity skills significantly enhance the quality of audit outcomes by verifying the correction of any significant defects found or reported in the audit report, meeting the expectations of audit clients, and collecting audit evidence. Considering that digitization is both a challenge and a vital opportunity for auditing, the results provided insightful information that is useful to all relevant parties that utilize the audit work's findings to inform their decisions. Given its critical significance in improving the quality of audit outcomes, this study offers significant positive results on an auditor’s digital competence impact and fostering auditor creativity on the quality of audit outcomes, which is noteworthy given its essential importance in supporting audit quality. So, the IAASB's Framework invites audit firms to consider methods for raising the calibre of their audits.