The Auditor's Toolbox
We have been receiving a lot of requests for more information on our Auditor's Toolbox masterclass [LINK], taking in exactly what it is, the benefits of the program and the difference between this workshop and the Risk Based Audit training that we deliver.
Firstly, the Auditor's Toolbox is not a toolbox in the literal sense, don't think of it as a plumber's bag loaded with spanners and hammers but more so a reference to the types of collective processes, models and techniques that auditors use to perform an outstanding quantitative audit.
The Auditor's Toolbox | Martin Davies
The course has four key session areas which have been summarised in the diagram above but can be explained as:
1. How to define an audit so that audit tests drive out coherent outcomes.
2. What type of data to collect to support an audit objective and the subsequent audit tests. How to collect audit data, how much to collect (it's expensive to collect audit data) and how to clean the data that is collected.
3. What type of models to use for different audit tests and importantly why one model is superior over another. We will explore the top 10 audit models with working examples during the training.
4. How to report the results from a quantitative audit test, how to draw conclusions and how to test the quality of an audit.
This workshop doesn't talk top level and it doesn't pitch the conceptual big picture of risk management or audit because that type of learning is covered in our Risk Based Audit program. The Auditor's Toolbox goes far beyond an audit framework, well past the three lines of defense debate and it assumes auditors know how to assess risk appetite in a business unit.
What this learning achieves is a real hands on walk through of a quantitative audit and a deep dive into audit testing using applied modelling techniques on actual commercial transaction or audit data.
As an auditor, if you have Quantitative Auditing Techniques under your belt, you are pretty much as good as it gets when it comes to being an outstanding auditor.
Some of our clients see this program as an advanced workshop but I don't like to put it in that goodness gracious me, this sounds horribly formulaic and mathematically torturous category. You need to be a relatively seasoned auditor to capture the best value from this training, no doubt there but our teaching style is very practical and not overly theoretical. We talk data and models by actually doing it rather than lecturing it.
All attendees will be given the models in spreadsheets ready to go, you don't have to buy any software beyond what comes with Microsoft Office. We also help attendees install and configure R-Project with auditors functionality and then teach them how to use the modelling tool in an inclusive teaching style where we are doing it together.
So that is the Auditor's Toolbox, a kit of models that help auditors assess uncertainty in real business audits.
