Page 28 - Internal Auditor M.E. (English) - June 2018

audit committee

By: Alaa Abdulaziz Abunabah
Working intelligently, not effortlessly,

in the Internal Audit profession

After I started working in the internal
audit profession, I realized how difficult it
is (“the profession of trouble” as Dr. Gamal
Mohamed Shehat coined it), I also realized
the great resistance of most departments
that are being audited and not accept many
of the internal audit’s observations and
recommendations, although they seek to
improve the work. This is due to a number
of reasons, including those related to the
work environment and the culture of the
organization, or related to the nature of the
auditee, or the auditor, but primarily the
main reasons are the lack of independence
of the internal audit department and poor
productivity. No doubt, organizations
(public, private and not-for-profit) are in
need to large-scale audits, overstepping
the normal auditing procedures , and often
without additional resources for internal
audit departments. Over time, I understood
most of those reasons and started working I. Within the Internal Audit Department: II. During audit planning :
hard to minimize their causes and effects.
Despite these difficulties, IIA’s Internal Audit department should: Many people think that the most important
Audit Standards and other, mandatory step in internal auditing is execution, yet
and non-mandatory, components of 1) Develop internal auditors skills in research and experiments have proven
the International Professional Practices scheduling priorities and optimizing otherwise because of the long and difficult
Framework (IPPF) have emphasized the time management . process that precedes the execution of an
need of internal auditors to maintain 2) Adopt the best solutions “archiving audit tasks. The most important step in the
their objectivity and to work efficiently. and management of records audit process is planning. Many studies and
Efficiency in the internal audit profession, electronically”, as it increases the speed management leaders have pointed out that
which is originally an administrative term, of storage and retrieval of information for every hour spent planning, we save four
means the ability to optimize the use and documents, and reduces the risk hours in execution. Planning is not a waste
of available resources or the energy the of storage and archiving manually of time, so an internal audit tasks relies
auditors have to achieve the objectives. and enables the retention of multiple heavily on sound planning, starting from
In this article, I will touch upon a set of versions. In this context, the Head proper identification of an Audit Universe,
recommendations that will help to achieve of an Internal Audit department then preparing the risk-based strategic and
the expected efficiency of the Internal must be keen to develop the skills of annual plan (Threats and Opportunities),
Audit department by using as few resources auditors in the field of documentation then ending with preparing detailed audit
and inputs as possible to produce as many & indexing, and in dealing with the programs. Among the steps I recommend
desired outputs and outcomes as possible. software and their uses in the field of
preservation, retrieval, management in this context are the following:
and circulation of documents.
Tips for raising efficiency 3) Adopting the Clean Desk Policy. From 1) Greater effort in selecting the audit
tasks, particularly in consultancy, and
Apart from investing in audit management my personal experience, I can say that taking into account the avoidance of
systems, data extraction and analysis there is a positive correlation between the most significant risks associated
tools, which I think are highly rewarding, an organized office and productivity, with this type of tasks. As the increase
I recommend the following, which do not under the condition of the auditor’s in risks may adversely affect the level
require many resources: desire to complete his/her work. and magnitude of the assurances

26 INTERNAL AUDITOR - MIDDLE EAST JUNE 2018