05/03/2026
Auditors: How do you know what to ask (that reveals real insight)?
How many times have auditees "forgotten" to tell you about the unofficial process,
Or part way through testing, you find out something unexpected about the process?
Rather than rely on auditees telling you what the process "should be", what if you could understand what is actually happening?
Many auditors design their control tests against the described process or the process documented in procedure manuals. But what if that's not a true reflection of what is happening?
Great auditors find specific instances where the described process is not supported by the evidence.
Can spot unexpected values and patterns to inform targeted clarification questions,
And are able to give management new insight about the processes they manage.
If you aren't doing this already, there are three thing that you need to be doing to achieve this:
1. Using data analytics so that you can view ALL the data and transactions. Sorry, you just can't do this using a sampling approach.
2. To understand a data technique called "Exploratory Data Analysis" (EDA) - to let the data do "the talking".
3. Using an analytics tool that can show you multiple perspectives of the data, with a few clicks of the mouse. This shouldn't be a complicated process, need coding (or AI!).
How do you uncover the "unexpected" in your audits? What approaches have you used? What worked and what didn’t?
If you would like a chat about how to embed this insight into your audits, please message me.
