February 2012

February 6, 2012

Five Proven Strategies for More Timely Audit Reports

In his iconic book Sawyer’s Internal Auditing: The Practice of Modern Internal Auditing, author Lawrence Sawyer observes that, “Few sources of friction within the auditing department exceed that caused by the process of report writing. The most brilliant of analyses and the most productive of audit findings seem to be forgotten during the trauma of report writing.” I have often thought that truer words have never been written.

As a young internal auditor, I learned early on how time-consuming and frustrating it could be to write an effective audit report. No matter how well I thought I had captured the results of the audit, the audit team leader would inevitably rewrite much of what I had written.…