Report Writing – Audit Communication Strategies
ACS (Audit Communication Strategies) is a one-day workshop that focuses on the strategies for reporting audit comments to auditees and other business readers.
Objective:
This workshop helps auditors turn an audit or technology issue into a business message that includes a value-added issue (control breakdown), a business risk statement, the root cause of the issue and sufficient, but not excessive, support to demonstrate the need for action.
What participants learn:
- How to write comments that can be read methodically or skim-read productively
- How to minimise potential misinterpretations
- How to develop value-added issues that describe the extent to which the business is not managing risk
- Using a three-step drill-down process, how to distinguish between a root cause, a symptom and an issue
- How to develop a business-orientated risk statement that convinces management of the need to resolve the issue based on the organisation’s risk tolerance level
- How to determine what support (including root cause) should be included in the audit comment to sufficiently support the issue and risk
- How to test each audit comment to determine its validity and value
- How to develop a practical, auditable, reliable, risk-orientated recommendation or collaborative action plan
- How to recognise and avoid jargon and apply other writing techniques to inform, not impress
- How to self-edit audit comments