By the end of this course delegates will be able to:

• Explore traditional and operational auditing from the perspectives of an in-charge
• Examine today’s changing control environment COSO, self-assessment, Sarbanes-Oxley, PCAOB, and corporate governance and their impact on Audit
• Find out how to use risk assessment to assist in building an audit program
• Learn how to overcome common audit planning problems
• Practice communication skills needed for in-charge auditors
• Apply what you have learned immediately with onsite exercises and case studies

Internal Auditors, Senior Auditors, Finance Personnel, Financial & Operational Auditors, Information Technology Personnel, External Auditors with two or more years of audit experience; Quality Assurance personnel; Data Security specialists

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

CDGA attendance certificate will be issued to all attendees completing minimum of 75% of the total course duration.