In South Africa, the scope of the internal audit functions (IAFs) in public sector organisations is limited by the government's mandate of service delivery. The IAF is obviously expected to support the government's strategies. In the same way, the IAF is expected to deliver services and advise its customers on the efficiency of the operations in terms of risk, control and governance processes. In many instances, the National Treasury plays a significant role in designing the guidelines to support the IAFs in the public sector. In this article, the IAFs are treated as an instrumental tool of audit committees, executive managers, programme managers and external auditors. IAFs play a significant role in advising and supporting the government's vision in meeting pre-determined targets with a view to addressing service delivery issues. The question that directs this article is, how is the IAF perceived by those that should ben