For the past 30 years, the development of the role and management's expectations of the internal audit function as related to information technology has been an evolutionary process. A sample of CEOs were surveyed to ascertain their opinions on internal audit's involvement in systems development, including whether internal auditors' independence is compromised by such involvement and whether auditors should act as consultants for systems development projects. The prevailing sentiment among the CEO respondents was that internal auditors should be involved primarily in testing the accuracy of the systems being developed. A comparison of CEOS' and chief audit executives' opinions shows, surprisingly, that the CEOs surveyed placed more importance on auditor independence than the audit executives, who emphasized the importance of auditors' consulting services.