During Internal Audit there are three very common mistakes that are performed by most Auditors during their initial few years, and it is quite natural of them to do it. But when the audit is of utmost important such mistakes can come back to bite you. Here are the three common mistakes:
He’s such a friendly person: He’s not. You’re meeting this person for the very first time and you both have had a very good impression of each other, this does not necessarily mean that you both have gelled well now. The first assumption is, data would come quickly without much delays, so I don’t have to follow up much. The second assumption, this person probably wouldn’t have committed anything intentional.
The High, Medium, Low: Auditors are most of the time inclined towards number of observations and in that notion lose out on testing some of the key controls. The moment there’s potentially 2-3 high risk rated observations, there’s a habit to relax a little and close the report with whatever is available. This could prove to be costly, if any fraud occurs. It is important to audit the process from the start to beginning following the appropriate audit process. If time is limited to cover the whole process, obtain minimum confidence from specific areas that at design level they are functioning and move the testing of operating effectiveness to the next period or so.
“HIGH POINTS HI HIGH POINT HOGA BABU BHAIYYA”
Maybe It’s not that Important: When data is received, it is important for the auditor to ensure that all the data fields are thoroughly understood with its relevance. Often the auditor sees certain data fields and the fields being empty or filled with numbers that don’t make sense, there’s a tendency to assume the field is redundant and is not that important to understand. Ignoring certain data fields while analysing critical data may lead to missing out on very important observations that could potentially lose the company money. Always be meticulous of the data fields that you analyse.
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