Governance and Compliance Audit cheat sheet

Basic concepts and elements in auditing

• An audit is a systematic, independent examination of evidence to form and express an opinion or conclusion on a defined subject matter, against agreed criteria.
• Monitoring is continuous and done by management; assessment is periodic and may be internal or external; an audit is periodic, independent of the activity examined, and ends in an opinion for someone other than the person responsible.
• Reasonable assurance is high but not absolute and is worded positively; limited assurance rests on less extensive work and is worded negatively: nothing has come to our attention.
• In an attestation engagement the practitioner reports on the responsible party's assertion; in a direct reporting engagement, the usual model for a governance audit, the practitioner measures the subject matter directly.
• A compilation is a non-assurance engagement: the practitioner expresses no opinion and no conclusion, and the report says so.