Internal audit efficiency levers

On the need for the audit to identify the levers of efficiency

 

It is said that we must have the means to achieve our ambitions. It is also necessary to have resources to achieve one's professional goals. This is the condition required to be effective, whatever the profession, the sector of activity, the hierarchical positioning, the economic environment, the financial context ... Internal audit , as special as this function may be, is not lost not the rule. No efficiency without capacity! But beyond this logical rule, there are specificities specific to each profession, therefore different efficiency criteria depending on the position occupied. These differences are mainly related to the nature of the missions entrusted. Remember that those concerning auditors relate to the compliance of operations and processing, the adequacy of risk management and control systems , and the evaluation of governance processes. Suffice to say that the subjects are vast! Thus, given the scope of the task, the internal audit must think carefully and methodically about the levers enabling it to be effective. The reading grid proposed below is intended to encourage this reflection.

 

Three levers for the effectiveness of internal audit

 

The internal audit efficiency levers are essentially based on three axes:

 

·         Resources: firstly, on a quantitative level, it is necessary to have a sufficient number of employees to carry out the missions provided for in the audit plan, which must cover all the risks inherent in the activities of the organization. Then, from a qualitative point of view, the auditors must be able to carry out their work without interference or hindrance, without limiting access to people, tools, systems, data. The independence in question here implies that internal Auditors in UAE is positioned on a hierarchical plane at a level high enough to overcome barriers and other hierarchical partitions. Finally, resources are also material, whether in financial terms or tools. In other words, the remuneration paid to the auditors must be sufficient to meet the requirements and responsibilities relating to them, just as the allocated technical means must be sufficiently efficient to contribute to the achievement of the mission objectives;

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·         Ethics: efficiency requires credibility. In this area, the audit profession is governed by a code of ethics. It is therefore up to the auditors to respect it, whether it is a question of the rules in terms of integrity, objectivity, confidentiality, competence. The professional behavior of the auditors should be incorporated into both the supervision of the work and the quality assurance program covering the audit activities;

·         Technicality: the profession of auditor needs to be a " jack of all trades " since all the functions of an organization are to be audited, without being a technician since the audit is prohibited from interfering in the operational and management processing. It is therefore necessary to know without exercising, which is not always easy for the good understanding of the underlying processes and risks. The internal audit manager In this way, as required by international standards issued by the IIA, it will ensure that all of the knowledge, skills and know-how are brought together to carry out the missions, given the complexity of the topics to be audited. In the event of insufficiency, the recourse to a service provider is necessary so that the audit is assisted and thus tends towards efficiency.