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Carole with 2007 GAO International Fellowship students.

 

Auditing Essentials
High performing auditors possess core competencies. Our auditing courses will build the confidence and competency high-performing auditors require to be perceived as credible and knowledgeable in the eyes of the client, audit office management and their peers.


Sampling: Design and Analysis for Performance Auditing (2-day course)

  • Choosing an appropriate sample design for the audit objectives
  • Understanding the application of nonprobability (judgmental)
    sampling
  • Understanding the application of probability sampling
  • Choosing appropriate sample sizes
  • Minimizing errors and bias
  • Analyzing sample data
  • Reporting results from probability and nonprobability samples

 

Managing Your Work (2-day course)

  • Understand and overcome barriers to priority setting
  • Eliminate activities that waste time
  • Organize and handle paperwork, phone calls, and e-mail more efficiently
  • Clarify expectations
  • Seek feedback
  • Understand directions correctly the first time they are received
  • Handle competing demands
  • Plan work effectively

 

Audit Report Writing (2-day course)

  • Crafting Sound Audit Objectives
  • Writing User-Friendly Audit Reports:
  • Balanced Tone
  • Knowing the Audience's Needs
  • Deductive Structure
  • Charge Paragraphs
  • Topic Sentences

    How to Write:
  • Executive Summaries
  • Introductory Paragraphs
  • Background
  • Findings Sections
  • Conclusions
  • Recommendations

 

Auditing Essentials (3-day course)

Designed primarily for newly hired auditors, this comprehensive training covers the following learning objectives:

  • Understand the importance of the auditing profession
  • Understand the importance of the Yellow Book and how it is organized
  • Understand the importance of ethical behavior for auditors
  • Describe the general standards
  • Describe the phases of audits
  • Describe the importance and key steps of audit planning
  • Understand the elements of a finding
  • Write sound audit objectives
  • Collect evidence that meets the Yellow Book tests of evidence
  • Understand the types of evidence
  • Understand frequently used data collection and analysis methodologies
  • Understand critical success factors for conducting interviews
  • Understand the importance of quality control, including indexing and referencing
  • Understand key components of audit reports
  • Apply tools for writing audit reports, e.g., deductive writing style, active voice, etc.
  • Define entrance and exit conferences

 

Ethics For Auditors (1-day course)

  • What it means to be a public servant
  • Overview and
  • importance of chapter 2, Ethics, in the Yellow Book
  • Independence
  • Personal Impairments
  • External Impairments
  • Organizational Independence
  • Gifts from outside sources
  • Conflicting financial interests
  • Seeking employment

 

Designing and Conducting Surveys

  • Draft precise audit surveys
  • Design questions that are objective, specific, and clearly written
  • Effectively implement audit surveys
  • Follow up to maximize the response rate

 

Audit Objectives and Audit Programs (1-day course)

  • Describe the elements of soundly crafted audit objectives
  • Understand the critical components of audit programs
  • Apply applicable planning standards as identified in the "Yellow Book"
  • Perform audits that directly link to audit programs and objectives
  • Understand the tests and types of evidence

 

Understanding the Yellow Book (1-day course)

  • Understand key Yellow Book standards
  • Understand ethical responsibilities
  • Understand the General Standards
  • Understand performance audits standards
  • Understand changes proposed in the 2010 exposure draft

 

Attestation Engagements and Performance Auditing: Understanding the Standards

  • Defining "performance audits" and "attestation engagements.
  • Differentiating between performance audits and attestation engagements
  • The importance of performance audits
  • Describing how attestation engagements add value
  • Reviewing performance auditing standards (Chapters 7 and 8 in the "Yellow Book"
  • Reviewing attestation standards (AICPA's Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements and Chapter 6 of the "Yellow Book")

 

Conducting Effective Meetings

  • The importance of effective meetings
  • What makes meetings ineffective? Pitfalls to avoid
  • Planning effective meetings, including developing a clear agenda
  • Conducting effective meetings, including handling disruptive behavior with poise and confidence
  • Concluding and evaluating the meetings
  • Developing an action plan

 

Team Building and Leadership Styles

  • Understand the stages of teams
  • Learn and apply helpful techniques for building and sustaining high-performing teams
  • Understand and apply helpful approaches to handling conflict
  • Understand a variety of leadership styles

 

Creative Thinking for Auditors

  • Understanding learning styles
  • Thinking “outside the box”
  • Overcoming writer’s block
  • Generating ideas
  • Using “new” analysis tools
  • Applying innovative approaches to teambuilding

 

Data Collection and Analysis Fundamentals

  • Understanding frequently used data collection tools
  • Collecting primary information
  • Interviewing techniques
  • Designing questionnaires
  • Analyzing information to develop findings
  • Comparing qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques

 

Interviewing for Information: A Structured Approach

  • The eight-step interviewing model
  • Active listening skills
  • Effective questioning techniques
  • Team interviewing
  • Handling difficult interview situations

 

Performance Auditing: The Fundamentals

  • Plan high-impact audits
  • Understand the critical elements of audit programs
  • Write sound audit objectives
  • Collect evidence that meets the Yellow Book tests of evidence
  • Successfully communicate the results of your audit findings in both writing and orally

 

Public Speaking for Auditors

  • Planning oral presentations
  • Organizing
  • Employing effective delivery skills
  • Preparing and using visual aids
  • Video conferencing
  • Fielding questions

 

Reporting and Presenting Findings

  • Differentiating different types of audit findings
  • Explaining the effect objectives have on findings and message formulation
  • Designing a report message
  • Writing findings that incorporate all four finding elements
  • Writing findings that meet the standards of evidence
  • Using charge paragraphs and topic sentences to organize findings

 

Standards of Evidence and Audit Documentation

  • What the “Yellow Book” says
  • Tests of evidence
  • Reviewing Types of evidence
  • Documenting evidence to support findings
  • Indexing and referencing

 

Streamlining the Report Writing Process

  • The report writing process as a team process
  • The importance of audit objectives and findings
  • The link between audit objectives and audit findings
  • Differentiating between types of audit findings
  • Collecting evidence that meets Yellow Book standards
  • Clarifying tests and types of evidence
  • Summarizing findings into a coherent draft report message
  • Writing effective charge paragraphs
  • Composing report sections
  • Writing tools that make audit reports more easily understandable and convincing
  • Applying strategies to overcome report writing challenges.
  • Clarifying the responsibilities of the audit manager, the AIC, and the performance team
  • Conducting productive report planning meetings

 

Writing Effective Audit Reports

  • Developing the message
  • Writing reader-friendly audit reports
  • Using deductive structure to present report information
  • Writing paragraphs with focus, unity, and coherence
  • Writing effective sentences
  • Choosing words that precisely and directly convey your message

 

 


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nasba Carole Buncher and Associates: The Competency Company™  is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) as a sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors.

 

   

 

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