The article I have chosen was “Internal auditors should BE BRAVE”. This
article discusses on how the internal auditor needs to be brave when it comes
to auditing any company. When internal audits are being performed, the
auditor discovers some findings which the company didn’t know about or the
auditor discovered it was being covered up by some employees. Auditors can
find it difficult to let the company what they have discovered because a
company doesn’t want to hear that is failing or they are not performing up to
par. This is where internal auditor needs to be brave and let the company
know of their findings in the audit. No matter how afraid they are, it would be
in the company’s best interest. As I was reading the article, the auditor
noticed large billing errors and was on the mission to discover the
discrepancies. The audit team talked to the department head of the company
and made some excuses about how his fellow employees were not very good
at their job. He told the audit team that he was doing all the work himself,
which required him to work all those hours. Well, that was a total lie and the
audit team found out that the staff had a lot of years of experience. It was to
be determined that “the department head was the cause of all the control
failures (Marks, 2019)”. This is where the auditor spoke up to the division
CEO and to one of the executives of the company. He let them both know of
his findings. This is where the internal was brave and let the company know
what was going on. In this situation, the auditor had the best interest of the
company in mind.
I learned about internal auditing from this article is that internal auditors are
hired by the company and are considered company employees. When the
internal audit was being performed by the auditor, the auditor never hesitated
to inform the division CEO about the findings. He gave the CEO advice on
how to proceed with the situation and informed him of the possible risks the
company could face by having the department head still in charge
The difference I have learned what an external auditor would do is they must
report all the findings in the audit to the shareholders and to all upper-level
management of the company. The external auditor also examines and
provides their own opinion on the company’s financial statements.
Reference
Marks, N. (2019). Internal auditors should BE BRAVE. Internal Auditor,
76(6), 36.
