Modern economic theories reject the generalization of theories
concerning the economic and financial crises. Each financial crisis is unique, a
historic accident, generated by specific factors in a certain socio-economic and
political set-up. According to these theories, crises cannot be anticipated so as to
minimize their negative effects. In spite of the fact that economic and financial crises
are not identical and do not produce identical effects, history teaches us that they
are strongly correlated with the cyclic nature of economic processes. The current
economic recession, which shows in all fields of activity, is determining auditors to
make evaluations which are a lot more precise, based on extensive procedures, as
long as the presumption of activity continuity into the future is accurate. In this
context, internal audit is individualized as an managerial assistance function, which
allows a correct perception of the reality of the business as a whole and/or as
predefined processes. The purpose of this paper is to create an overall picture of
internal audit by collecting data and information from literature and showing the
dimensions and the internal audit practices internationally. Therefore, we conducted
a research based on the analysis of national and international publications, various
articles and studies in the financial press, on the emergence and development of
the internal audit function both internationally and nationally. Later we analyzed the
position of internal audit in terms of global financial crisis, all these leading to the
usage of a comparative study of twelve international companies in order to highlight
the specific features of the internal audit function in each organization. Our intention
is to emphasize aspects of internal audit departments, relations between them and
the management, their role in companies based on studies provided by Protiviti, a
global consulting and internal audit services company, having experts specializing
in risk, consultancy and transactions.