How is an Audit Performed?

So how is an audit performed?

If you answer all of the questions below in sequence AND document your decisions and the information you collect as you go, you will have performed an audit.

No, this doesn’t cover everything… but these questions do hit the highlights.

• What are you going to audit? In other words, what is the subject matter?
• Who is interested in the results of this audit? What are they interested in?
• What is your audit criteria? In other words, what standard are you going to evaluate the subject matter against?
• What is important about this subject matter? In other words, why are you bothering to audit it? What is the risk you are trying to address?
• What are you expecting to find?
• Do the people in charge of making sure the subject matter meets the criteria have their act together? In other words, are they controlling what is happening or are they just moving forward and hoping for the best?
• After understanding the risks and the controls the people in charge have put in place, does this subject still concern you? In other words, have the people in charge addressed the risk with controls? If so, close this audit down or move on to another risk.
• If you are still concerned about the subject matter and the controls over the subject matter, you need to perform tests to make sure nothing bad is happening. Which tests are you going to perform? Where are you going to get the information to run these tests?
• Now that you have run the tests and have your results, is this what you were expecting? If not, why is it different than what you expected? Document all of your rationales and report any risks and control weaknesses to those interested in the results of your audit.
• What is your overall conclusion regarding whether the subject matter meets the criteria? Share your conclusion with those who are interested in the results of your audit.

So that answers the question, “How is an audit performed?” with even more questions!

If you want to learn more, I suggest this bundle of self-study courses.