Embedding Critical Thinking into the Internal Audit Process

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

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

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

Planning – Risk Based Audits

o   In determining scope and levels of risk – impact and likelihood

o   In determining audit prioritization

o   Interviewing and questioning

Assessing Process and Testing

o   Identifying what to test, how to test and when to expand testing

o   Determining sufficiency of testing evidence

o   Keeping the focus on the objective

Evidence and Evidence Gathering

o   Why is Audit Evidence so important?

o   Quality of Evidence and Assurance

o   Evidentiary Sources and Reliance

o   Methods to gather evidence

Communicating and Reporting

o   5 C’s – condition, criteria, consequence, cause, corrective action

o   Findings – Significance, relevance, and framing

o   Selecting impactful evidence – charts, graphs, pictures, flow charts

FOR WHOM:

Internal audit staff and management

TRAINING METHODOLOGY

The training methodology combines lectures, discussions, group exercises and illustrations. Participants will gain both theoretical and practical knowledge of the topics. The emphasis is on the practical application of the topics and as a result participant will go back to the workplace with both the ability and the confidence to apply the techniques learned to their duties.