Tag: audit

These new dedicated control functions are, in many aspects, similar to the internal audit function. After having introduced the well-known ‘three lines of defence’ approach, this article presents to directors a method to challenge the possible overlap between the compliance monitoring and internal audit functions

Until recently, there has been no standard in Anglo-Saxon practice for the external assessment of audit committees. The best-practice standard for audit committee assessment has always been based on self-assessment.This practice is now being reconsidered.

Investors and stakeholders in various companies and organisations, across all industries and of all sizes, are increasingly calling for improved audit committee reporting. In particular sentiment has been moving in the direction of bespoke and customised methods of audit reporting.

The post crisis climate has made the audit committee role more important than ever. Investors and all related business parties are keeping a closer eye on the corporate governance and regulatory stringency of company financial behaviour and the oversight of this falls to the audit committee.

There are a range of factors taken under consideration when selecting and retaining external auditors. In particular, one key consideration is the independence of the auditing process as history and research has indicated that the success of the external auditor is predominantly based on the probability that an auditor will both find and report a breach in the financial and accounting systems on an organisation.

From the auditors involved in the Enron scandal to the more recent Lehman Brothers accounting debacle, there is a widespread mistrust of the audit profession.