Fundamentals of Internal Auditing

[MUSIC] Welcome the fundamentals of internal auditing. I'm Dr Hernan Murdoch, and I'm very excited to introduce this course to you. You're gonna enjoy it a lot. I've been in this field for many years. I'm a certified internal auditor and also certified in risk management assurance. And over the years, I've done a lot of artists in different industries in the US and abroad. Everything from telecom power generation organizations, manufacturing, transportation, education. So I've seen a lot done a lot, and I'm very happy to share a lot of these experiences with you. And with me is Kathleen Crawford, who has a lot of experience. Kathleen. Welcome. Thanks for Nan. Hi, everybody. I think I wanna start by saying not only am I Kathleen Crawford, but I too. I'm super excited that you're with us. This is a profession that I've been in for a long time, and I can't say that I found anything else that satisfies both parts of my brain the way that this does. There's soft skills and hard skills. It's really terrific. I've worked in financial services and I've worked in the nonprofit sector as an internal auditor and I will echo some of what Herman said in terms of there's places to go and people to see. And there's so much that we can do in terms of contributing to benefit the organizations that we work for. So in addition to my work experience, I also have an MBA. And, I've leveraged that a few times, too. So we have a lot to share with you. And we'd really like you to know more about why we're so excited. Excellent. So as we think about the course itself, we're going to begin with the definition, talking about the role that internal auditors play within the organization and how they help support and satisfy the needs of so many stakeholders outside organization and insight and how we can help the organization achieve its objectives. We're going to start looking at things like that macro level, understanding, our role, our place and who we report to and how we provide expert information to the people who need to know about what's happening within the organization. And then we're going to walk you through the entire life cycle of an audit. So Kathleen tells a little about what that entails. Sure, well, everything begins and ends with risk assessment. So we're going to talk to you about how risk assessment happens in our organizations. Were interested in knowing whether or not systems, processes and functional areas are working as management intends. And so we're going to look at what those objectives are. What are they trying to accomplish? And what do we see as the possible risks and impediments to them getting done what they want to get done. So our work begins with risk assessment. We have an annual or semiannual risk assessment process that's going to identify a suite of audit projects that we will do. We also use risk assessment in the project itself. So looking at a more micro level at what is going on with this part of the business, we want to make sure that we understand the objectives that they're trying to accomplish and what kinds of risks could get in their way, both internal and external, to the organization. We move from risk assessment than into the planning phase of our work. So we're putting together an approach that we think we can accomplish within a limited time horizon. We're also mindful of our team members and their skills and their competencies and their capacity, as well as the standards that we have to follow. And so the requirements of the work. What is expected we move from planning into what's called fieldwork and fieldwork is where a lot gets done. There's an audit program that we have to follow and specific techniques that we might use. So when we're trying to understand what's going on with the area processor system, we're likely to use either Data Analytics to select certain things for us to look at. Or we might use some kind of sampling. And these are two ways by which we can target what we believe to be most meaningful in the project that we have activated. We follow a work program that has been created in the planning phase the auditor's work together to achieve that series of steps and tests and evaluations. They communicate results as they go along, so communication is a very important aspect of our process as well. Both verbal and written communication as Hernane had said so we want to make sure that we're keeping our clients very much abreast and involved in what's going on with our work and share with them our results. As we wind down fieldwork, there are going to be discussions in terms of what went well, what could benefits from some improvement or some changes. So we're going to have an audit report that comes out of this process. And then we also opine on risk assessment and whether or not the risk appetite or risk universe needs to be updated in terms of making it more current and more related to what's actually going on. Excellent. Yes. So as we go through this whole process and understand what internal auditors do and how they do it is also going to provide an opportunity to also take a look at some of the critical events that have shaped our profession as we know it now. Some of the rules, regulations and dynamics that have been impactful, and also as we look forward in terms of what kinds of things we see, some of it is going to be in terms of soft skills, some of it will be in terms of technical skills and, of course, technology and the role that it plays in our profession. So I hope you'll journals. It's gonna be fun. [MUSIC]