When assessing contract change order (CCO) disputes on-site, independent auditors have relied upon various techniques to identify the causes and effects of these disputes in order to produce audit reports. However, it has resulted in the various structures of dispute analysis and hence makes it difficult to understand by the parties involved. This paper aims to investigate the CCO disputes by implementing a framework developed specifically to analyse the causes, effects, and possible actions to mitigate the CCO disputes – the Causes, Effects & Mitigations (CEM) framework. A qualitative approach with two sequential strategies was adopted consisting of structured case analysis and expert interviews. Three audit reports related to the CCO disputes were analysed and used as case studies. The results of the case study analysis were then used to produce the CCO profiles that can assist parties to understand CCO disputes that occurred at the project level. Finally, expert interviews were conducted to investigate the effectiveness of this framework. This study contributes by investigating CCO disputes using the CEM framework. The dispute profiles produced are considered effective in providing a better understanding of CCO disputes at the project level.