Managing Fieldwork
- Definition of internal auditing
- Why IA must add more value
- Fieldwork management
- Fieldwork methodology tools
- Workpaper review
- Evaluation samples
- Overview of Professional Standards
Auditing Concepts: The In-Charge Perspective
- Responsibilities of the IA department
- Operational vs. financial/compliance auditing
- Essentials of operational auditing
- The audit triangles
- Questions an audit attempts to answer
The Control Environment: High-Impact Changes
- Evidence of the changing control environment
- Soft/hard controls
- Balance risks and controls
- Examples of entity-level controls
- Impact of Sarbanes-Oxley
- Governance control matrix
- Corporate governance,
- Blue Ribbon Committee on Corporate Audit Committees
- Sarbanes-Oxley overview
- Control environment to avoid
- RFBU
Marketing and Selling Internal Audit
- Key factors in marketing and selling the audit function
- Five key things to consider in branding
Risk Assessment Strategies
- Risk assessment defined
- Differentiating enterprise risk and audit risk
- Differentiating inherent risk and residual risk
- Criteria for effective risk assessment
- Risk environment
- Trends in risk assessment
- Four assets of auditors
- Gross risk and net risk
- Risk matrix
- Audit level risk assessment factors
Preliminary Fieldwork and Program Development
- Importance of preliminary work
- Allocating time
- Areas to consider for a more productive audit
- The audit program
- Criteria for audit programs
- How to manage an audit
Applying Project Management to Internal Audit
- Project approaches to audit teams
- Key factors to successful audit/project management
- The audit/project planning process
- Using project management to effectively plan audits
- Time estimates
- Common workflow planning problems
- Audit/project leader responsibilities
- Resource management
- Guidelines and examples of good audit/project management
- Time management improvement issues
Fraud Awareness
- Impact of Sarbanes-Oxley on addressing fraud, PCAOB impact
- What constitutes fraud
- Antifraud mantra: prevention and timely detection
- What to do when you suspect fraud
- Professional standard
- Areas of fraud occurrence
- Indicators of potential fraud
- Proven techniques for preventing and detecting fraud
- Auditing the tone at the top
Effective Communications
- Do’s and don’ts of effective meeting management
- Trends in audit report formats
- Executive summary options
- Recommendation options
- Guidelines for issuing more timely reports
- Closing conference strategies currently in practice