Dancing around the issue.
I enjoyed reading "Renewed Focus on Fraud" ("In My Opinion," April 2008). The author is right that fraud is a hot potato that neither auditors nor audit clients feel comfortable looking in the eye. We dance around it by looking at controls and by suggesting that without the proper controls, fraud could be one of the risks.For the past several years, our audit department has used fraud risk questionnaires as part of the audit planning process. They have been a useful tool, not only in breaking through the term barrier of fraud, but also in opening a dialogue with managers regarding some of the opportunities, pressures, and attitudes they've seen. Establishing that dialogue helps us to better understand how to design our audit steps and opens the door for management to bring things to our attention that we might not otherwise discover.
I don't think a change in the wording of the International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing will have any impact on how auditors approach fraud. Most managers don't know or care about what The IIA says their fraud responsibility should be. Most managers also don't know or care who or what The IIA is. Regardless of what The IIA thinks, looking for fraud will continue to be treated as something that's someone else's concern--management will continue to think that it's the auditor's job or corporate security's job to look for it, and auditors will think it's management's job to look for it. Nothing will be different.
No matter how many laws, rules, and regulations are written, the responsibility for finding fraud will always be the hot potato no one wants to hold.
MARK R. KOLMAN
Audit Manager
Hillsborough County
Tampa, Fla.
[email protected].
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| Author: | Kolman, Mark R. |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Internal Auditor |
| Article Type: | Letter to the editor |
| Date: | Jun 1, 2008 |
| Words: | 290 |
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| Next Article: | Analyzing financial statements. |
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