Why does an answer show as updated after the staff account assigned to the answer is edited?

Environment: 

November 2011 and newer releases

Resolution:

If a staff account is moved to another account group, all of the answers assigned to that staff account will reflect an edit transaction. This occurs because each answer has a specific value assigned for the "Assigned Group" field. This value is separate from the "Assigned Account" field even though they are both displayed together under the "Assigned" field in the answer workspace. Therefore, you can change one and not the other.

For example, an answer can be assigned to the group "Authors" and the staff account "Jane Doe". You can change the assigned staff account (Jane Doe) while keeping the assigned group (Authors) the same. This change would result in an edit transaction in the Audit Log of the answer. This will also be reflected in the Date Updated field of the answer. 

If Jane Doe's staff account is moved to another group "Disabled", this does not change the value of the assigned staff account in the answer. However, because there is a hierarchical relationship between accounts and groups, the assigned group value changes for all answers which Jane Doe is assigned to. This also occurs for any incidents she is assigned to. The group change from "Authors" to "Disabled" is correctly logged as an edit transaction in the Audit Log and this reflects as an update in the answer or incident record.