This study aimed to map out previous studies on sharia auditing and its role in improving sharia compliance in Islamic financial institutions (IFIs). It also outlined the challenges faced by IFIs and solutions in implementing shariah audit. A total of 308 publications were obtained from the Google scholar database, Emerald Insight, Research Gate, Crossref, Microsoft Academic and Pubmed which were accessed using the Publish or Perish (PoP) software in the 2008-2021 period. This study finds that sharia audits have been implemented in several countries, dominated by Malaysia. Most shariah audit practices are part from internal audit function of IFIs. Sharia audit is identified as a mechanism to assure shariah compliance. The main challenges in implementing sharia audit include: a lack of framework and standard of shariah audit that led to dispute among IFIs practitioners, a lack of qualified shariah auditors who have an adequate shariah knowledge and well trained, shariah audit identifed creating an efficiency issue. The role of the shariah governance committee and the shariah supervisory board may be optimized to ensure the effectiveness of shariah audit. This study provides a comprehensive discussion of shariah audit, its role in improving shariah compliance, challenges, and solutions offered learned from various countries.