DAY ONE

Audit Reports

• The 5 dilemmas of audit reporting

• What is a best practice report?

• Top tips – communicating results

• The challenges of audit reporting

• Grabbing attention

• Getting the message across

• Getting action

• The need for impact

• Ideas on creating impact

• What management expect – recent survey of chief executive

• IIA professional standards

The Problems with Audit Reports

• The 35 questions (all based on best practice) – how did you score?

• What are the factors preventing the achievement of these best practice measures

• 30 tips, techniques and ideas to help you score a maximum
  - How to get 95% of recommendations implemented
  - Use of charts and photos
  - Dealing with minor issues
  - Future focus
  - Order of importance of the issues
  - Actions rather than recommendations
  - Action plans

• Discussion of the implications

• How to assess the needs of the audit customers

Exercise 1: 35 questions about your audit reports issued during the last 12 months

The Executive Summary

• The role of the executive summary

• 20 tips for writing better summaries

• Targeting the executive summary to the reader

• The benefits of writing the executive summary before the main report

• Asking a non-technical person to read it

Exercise 2: Comparison of three executive summaries

DAY TWO

Best Practices Internal Audit Reports Developing A Collaborative, Consultative Style

• The psychological problem with reports

• The need to meet and hopefully exceed management expectations

• The need to focus on benefits rather than problems

• Marketing the audit reporting process

• An example presentation will be shared

• Relationships with management

• Expressing yourself effectively

• The need to drive action

• Creating rapport with your customers – tips and techniques

• The need to understand the people receiving the reports

Exercise 3: The psychology of reports

Writing Reports with Impact

• Messages rather than content

• Outcomes rather than output

• Solutions not problems

• Auditor and reader mindsets

• Why audit reports are taken as a criticism of management

• Ways to make the reports more positive

• Benefits and deliverables

• Conclusions

• How to draft a report with impact – discussion of banner headlines and their relative impact

• Language and impact

• Simple and complex language

• The use of ‘power words’ in your communications

• How to get on the same wavelength as your customer

• Highlighting the issues that matter

• Audit observations

• New paper on audit observations will be shared

• Causes and effects

Exercise 4: Causes and effects exercise

The Main Report

• Keeping it simple

• The report process

• Writing the main report

• Dealing with writer’s block

• Audit objectives

• Scope

• Forming and expressing the audit opinion

• Wording tips

• Tone

• Writing effective coherent sentences and paragraphs

• The editing process – tips for success

• The power of senior management comments

• Circulation lists

• Formatting ideas

• How to avoid repeating any sections in the executive summary

• Words and phrases to avoid

• How to reduce the number of words

• Why the spellchecker sometimes does not help you

• Dealing with the difficulties of the English language

Finalizing The Report

• Recommendations and actions plans

• Management comments

• How to reflect the right issues for the Audit Committee

• Audit Committee report examples

• The need to be on your customers’ side

• Follow up audits – using the action plan

• How to get management to take responsibility for actions

• Ways to improve the follow-up process

• Issuing the report

• Presenting or issuing reports including the use of e-mail and the Intranet

• Alternative methods of reporting e.g. PowerPoint

• Examples of excellent reports will be provided

• Reporting performance indicators

• Tracking actions

• Steps to success