Beginning Auditor Tools and Techniques

The outline for this course is as follows: 

​Internal Audit Today

• Discuss some of the best practices within internal auditing today.
• Identify core services and value-added opportunities provided by internal audit..
• Determine the activities that occur within each stage of the audit model.

Risk Assessment and Risk Management

• Mitigate risks to help ensure management directives are carried out.
• Use impact and likelihood factors to assess risk.
• Identify controls for mitigating risks to strategic objectives.
• Evaluate control issues using the COSO Framework.
• Identify strengths, gaps, and concerns of an internal control environment.

Audit Planning

• Identify IPPF guidance related to the planning phase of an audit.
• Assess the likelihood and impact of high-level inherent risks.
• Assess roles and activities in annual audit planning and audit project planning.
• Discuss objectives and best practices for opening conferences.

Interviewing

• Describe the uses, objectives, and expected outcomes of interviews at each stage in the audit model.
• Discuss best practices for planning and conducting interviews.
• Identify best practices and opportunities for improvement in interviewing.
• Prepare an interview based on a given scope-area objective.

Process Documentation

• Contrast and create a basic narrative and a flowchart.
• Discuss the advantages of some best practices for narratives and flowcharts.
• Identify inconsistencies in flowcharts and narratives.
• Describe three types of walkthroughs.

Audit Programs

• Classify inherent impacts and likelihoods for various types of risks.
• Classify controls as preventive or detective, and as automated or manual.
• Identify control points and possible control gaps on flowcharts.
• Complete a risk matrix.
• Determine which controls are key controls, and whether they should be tested during an audit.
• Assess testing objectives.
• Assess roles in the development of audit programs.

Automated Tools

• Discuss tools that automate the audit process.

Testing

• Describe methodologies used to gather audit evidence.
• Contrast various types of sampling and testing approaches.
• Assess the appropriateness of varying sampling and testing approaches for the achievement of specific testing objectives. 
• Draft an audit workpaper.

Reporting

• Write an audit report using the five components.
• Recognize the components of an audit report.
• Determining the readers of audit reports.
• Assess the quality of an audit opinion.

Selling the Results

• Discuss methodologies for “selling” audit findings to stakeholders.
• Describe factors that help “sell” audit findings and recommendations.
• Identify best practices and opportunities for improvement in exit conferences.

Teamwork

• Explain how teamwork is essential to an audit project.
• Examine how your own capabilities contribute to a team audit project.