Quality Assurance in Internal Audit

While internal audit units fulfill their duty to develop and add value to the activities of their organizations, they should also constantly monitor the effectiveness of their own activities. With the establishment and implementation of the “Quality Assurance and Improvement Program”, the assurance of effectiveness and compliance with standards in internal audit activities is ensured. The internal audit units within the scope of this program, which must be fulfilled in accordance with the current standards of internal auditing, must be self-evaluated by competent internal auditors and the results must be reported to the internal audit units and reported to the top managers by the unit heads. It is considered appropriate that self-assessments, which provide the internal audit units with the opportunity to reach a certain level of maturity by constantly reviewing their goals, objectives and activities, should be seen as a means of keeping alive and developing the intention and capacity of internal audit units to fulfill their mission and meet expectations, rather than a necessity.

The chief audit executive should establish policies for periodic internal quality reviews of the internal audit activity.

Internal reviews, internal audit activity and oversight; should evaluate its quality, compliance with standards and the internal audit unit’s audit guidelines, the method of adding additional value to organization, and whether performance indicators have been achieved.

Continuous Internal Evaluations

Continuous internal evaluation efforts are to ensure that the customary practices and policies used to manage the internal audit activity comply with the standards. This can be achieved:

•      Mission Oversight and Control,

•      “Check Lists” that ensure the control of the realization of every stage of the internal audit activities in accordance with the methodology,

•      Feedback from the supervised and participants,

•      Review of working papers by auditors who were not participated in the relevant audit,

•      Realization rates of performance indicators.

The most important element of the quality program is compliance with IIA standards. For this, audit activity performance measures should be developed by internal audit units.

This includes:

•      Internal audit processes,

•      The level of contribution to the development of internal control, risk management and management processes,

•      The rate of reaching the main targets and the determined goals,

•      Internal audit competence, innovation,

•      Percentage of audit recommendations implemented,

•      Staff productivity,

•      Increasing the cost-effectiveness of the audit process,

•      Increase in the number of activity plans in process developments,

•      Appropriate task planning and management,

•      Efficiency in meeting the needs of right holders,

•      Management’s expectations from internal audit and the number of management requests,

•      Number of complaints about the internal audit department.

Are appropriate measures that can be used to support a review of the internal audit activity?

Of course, it is possible to increase these dimensions.