Course Description
Organizations today are looking to their audit departments for company insights, risk and fraud expertise, in-depth industry knowledge and forward looking reporting. Auditors are expected to be open-minded and analytical thinkers. Decision making skills and professional judgment are a daily necessity in the internal audit process. Teaching auditors to utilize critical thinking skills throughout the audit process strengthens their ability to identify and assess risk, prioritize testing, align audit objectives with business objectives and identify true value add activities.
This course will provide you with skills and techniques necessary to embed critical thinking skills in all aspects of the audit cycle. The tools and techniques shared will guide your use of critical thinking skills in risk assessment, interviewing, audit evidence gathering, root cause analysis and report writing. Real life examples of failures and successes of critical thinking in internal audit will be covered to further the learning process.
This course is interactive with multiple hands-on exercises and class participation to provide opportunities for you to practice what you learn.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the process of critical thinking and intellectual traits
- Discuss the meaning and application of professional judgment
- Demonstrate how critical thinking helps improve the audit process
- Compare and contrast auditor judgment and critical thinking skills
- Review ways to develop critical thinking to enhance the audit process
- Cover the use of critical thinking during the risk assessment, interviewing and reporting cycles
- Review the importance of appropriate, sufficient and persuasive audit evidence
Course Outline
Professional Standards
- International Standards for the Professional Practices of Internal Auditing – IIA
- Government Audit Standards – GAO
- IT Standards, Guidelines, and Tools and Techniques for Audit and Assurance and Control Professionals – ISACA
Critical Thinking
- Key terms/definitions
- Critical thinking levels and characteristics
- Reasoning and professional judgment
- Understanding biases, fallacies and inferences in the thinking process
- Intellectual thinking traits and standards
Professional Judgment
- What is professional judgment?
- Applying professional judgment to the audit process
- Professional Judgment Framework
- Developing/strengthening professional judgment
Embedding Critical Thinking in Internal Audit
- Audit Maturity Model
- Planning – Risk Based Audits
- In determining scope and levels of risk – impact and likelihood
- In determining audit prioritization
- Interviewing and questioning
- Assessing Process and Testing
- Identifying what to test, how to test and when to expand testing
- Determining sufficiency of testing evidence
- Keeping the focus on the objective
- Evidence and Evidence Gathering
- Why is Audit Evidence So Important
- Quality of Evidence and Assurance
- Evidentiary Sources and Reliance
- Methods to gather evidence
- Communicating and Reporting
- 5 C’s – condition, criteria, consequence, cause, corrective action
- Findings – Significance, relevance, and framing
- Selecting impactful evidence – charts, graphs, pictures, flow charts
Case Studies and Exercises
- Failures in Audit that could have been prevented with critical thinking
- Success Stories using Critical Thinking in Audit
- Multiple hands-on exercises utilizing critical thinking skill
Additional Information
Who Should Attend
Internal audit staff and management
Level
Intermediate
Delivery
Group Live or Group Internet-Based
Field
Auditing
Advanced Preparation
None
Recommended Prerequisites
Auditors with at least 2 years’ experience in order to draw upon their professional audit experience
Session Duration
On Site: 2 days
CPE Credits: 16