The internal audits in an organization provide numbers of services that are significantly important to company management and help organization to succeed. These services include testing internal control, assessing operational risk, detecting the misstatement, and monitoring compliance with government regulation and policy. Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) gives the latest definition of internal audit is that: Internal audit is an independent assurance and consulting activity management, aims to add value to organizations and institutions to improve operational efficiency. It takes a systematic, disciplined approach to risk management, control and governance processes to improve, and helping organisation to achieve its objectives.
Unlike external auditors form outside of the organization, they provide opinions mainly associated with financial statements or risk problems on wider issues in business environment. Internal audits as an independent department resides within the organization working in partnership with appropriate authorities, having a larger coverage range than external audits in both financial and non-financial area. Internal auditors also transformed to become a respected member in management decision-making and internal control.
Nowadays, more and more attention has been paid on internal auditing. Drawing the lessons from the scandal of Enron, Enron allowed an external accounting firm to take charge of company’s internal audit function, and consequently
Scoping and Evaluation Judgments in the Audit of Internal Control over Financial Reporting 12.1 EyeMax Corporation . . Evaluation of Audit Differences
1- Independence: - The internal auditor should have the independence in terms of organizational status and personal objectivity which permits the proper performance of his duties.
Arthur Andersen (AA) contributed to the Enron disaster when it has failed to the management by failing to have Enron establish and enforce its own internal control. There has been flaws to AA‘s internal control. There has been assumption that AA partners were too motivated by revenue recognition thus, overlooking several criteria when providing their services to Enron. Additionally, AA also recognised the retention of audit clients as vital and a loss of any clients would be disadvantaged to an auditor’s career. In AA internal control, the person who is able to make most of the decisions is the person who is most concerned about the revenue or losses of the client’s company.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the SEC’s influence on auditing a private company and the essential activities involved in the initial planning of an audit. Next the discussion will delve into four stages of the audit and tasks performed by the auditors as well as internal control findings and various aspects of the audit.
Due to increasing economic and financial growth, many types of audit have been incorporated throughout the development process of internal activities. Audits can be performed manually or they can incorporate technology. According to Hunton and
A company might decide to establish an internal audit department because an effective and independent internal audit department add values and improve effectiveness of risk management, control, and governance processes. It also helps prevent and detect the frauds.
The company should hire it’s own internal auditor’s to ensure that the staff understand the company’s accounting procedures. This also helps the external auditor as it give the external auditor another viewpoint when assessing fraud risks. The internal auditors are apart of those charged with governance and that helps take the pressure off of the external auditor if a fraud should be discovered.
Internal auditing is an independent objective assurance and consulting acitivity designed to add value and improve an organizations operations.
Internal auditors cannot effectively provide an analysis on the company’s internal dealings as they are part of the company. External auditors, however, can observe these processes from the outside and then determine where the funds of the company and whether the dealings adhere to the regulations. Using external auditors in a company prevents conflict of interest from happening. Conflict of interest is a situation where an individual or organization has multiple interests and of those multiple interests, one could possible corrupt the motivation for an act on the other when the auditor has any kind of beneficial interest in their client’s performance. In other circumstances, there is also the threat of familiarity where auditors become
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the role of external auditing in promoting good corporate governance. The role of auditors has been emphasized after the pass of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act as a response to the accounting scandal of Enron. Even though auditors are hired and paid by the company, their role is not to represent or act in favor of the company, but to watch and investigate the company’s financials to protect the public from any material misstatements that can affect their decisions. As part of this role, the auditors assess the level of the company’s adherence to its own code of ethics.
According to the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), (2011), the internal auditing is a team of consultants, a department and a division or other practitioner which independent, have objective assurance and conduct a consulting activity which is designed to add value and improve the organization operations. The internal auditor can help an organization in achieving its objectives by bringing a discipline and systematic approach in order to improve and evaluate the effectiveness of risk management, control and governance process.
An internal auditor is an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve and organization’s operations. Internal auditors search for risk that could potential cause a company to not reach their stated goals. In order for a internal auditor to do their job effectively and efficiently, the executives must be willing to work with the internal auditors through tough issues and be open for change and improvements. Internal auditors must have the full support of the audit committee of the board of directors. Internal Auditors and Management rarely have the same views but must work together for the better of the company. Internal auditors pride themselves in saving their company from losing thousands some times millions in revenue do to the risk that go undetected.
The aim of this essay is to study the function of external auditors in order to analyze why it is important to be independent. The primary mission of external auditors is to review and evaluate all the financial records of a company or corporation. They provide an objective opinion on the organization’s financial statement and effectiveness of the accounting polices in order to help management to make decisions. If the independence of the external auditors is impaired, the public will doubt the quality of professional auditing services, and the consequence would be very serious, just like the bankruptcy of Enron led to the disorganization of Arthur Andersen, once a giant accounting company in the world. In order to maintain and increase
The role of internal audit is to provide independent declaration that an organization’s threatadministration, governance and internal control processes are functioning effectively. Internal auditors deal with concerns that are essentially important to the existence and success of any organization. Unlike external auditors, they aspect beyond financial possibilities and statements to reflect wider problems such as the organization’s reputation, development, its power on the location and the approach it treats its organizations.In summary, internal accountantssupport organizations to thrive.
Internal auditors must freely disclose all the necessary information to the external auditors without pressure from authorities with governance. External auditors must also be able to freely give concerns about the matters that may affect the internal audit functions.