Analyzing issues to payroll and wages amongst other

Discussion

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Respond to two colleagues (BELOW): (Half a page each and please, provide each reference separately)

Discussion Topic

External risk assessments can be very costly to an organization. Identify five steps that an organization can utilize to prepare themselves before the external assessors arrive. Why did you select these five things?

Post from colleague 1

Because external assessments can be costly, being prepared is the best way to get through them. In my position, I am continually involved with security audits, however, all internal. I am not familiar with how external audits are run or for how long. The following 5 tips were pulled from an article on reprocity.com, however, I believe they are usable to any company environment.

Understand the standard:

• “Take the time to read and understand the standard you will be compared to. This is critical to understand the approach the external auditors will take.”, Kraus, Aaron (2016)

Identify your subject matter expert (SMEs):

• Find the employee with the most knowledge and to help the auditor and ensure they understand the importance of the audit and are familiar with the standard.

Make sure to allocate sufficient resources to your experts:

• Ensure that the SME’s have the resources available to them to assist with the audit expediently.

Determine your internal procedures:

• Make sure that the SME’s assisting with the audit understand and can go through all the relevant internal processes being examined. Ensure that through this understanding that all gaps are closed before the audit.

Gather documentation for your procedures:

• Make sure to have all internal procedures documented and in place.

References:

Kraus, Aaron (2016). 5 Tips to Prepare For Your First External Audit. Reciprocity.com, 08/09/2016. Retrieved from: https://reciprocitylabs.com/5-tips-prepare-first-external-audit/

Post from colleague 2

Firstly, I will discuss what external risk assessment is, in order to gain a better understanding of our organization from an impartial third party is very important to all organization irrespective of shape and size. According to an article written by the Risk management team for Compliance Bridge complied a list of objectives that are derived from conducting external audit risk assessment which are:

1. Identifying and preventing misstatement

2. Evaluating business operations and finding improvements

3. Assessing your procedures in determining compliance with industry regulations and standards

4. Detecting issues relating to systems and security

5. Analyzing issues to payroll and wages amongst other (Risk Management Team, 2019)

So technically, an External Risk assessment is an external assessment of an internal audit of an organization by a qualified, independent assessor or assessment team to evaluate an organization audit’s conformity with the standards and the Code of Ethics.

Five steps that an organization can utilize and be prepared before the external assessors arrive are listed by the Harvard University’s article on ‘preparing for an External Audit’

1. Planning and preparation stage

2. Entrance conference

3. Fieldwork

4. Exit interview and finally

5. Audit report (Harvard University, 2020)

These planning and preparation stage is very vital in preparation for the external auditors which includes

1. By designating a liaison person that would make necessary arrangement with the company staffs,

2. Setting up technical teams,

3. Training sessions with individuals who would participate in the audit,

4. Gathering of documentations that would be used during the audit, and finally

5. Contacting the auditors to set up the entrance conferences

References:

Risk Management Team, (2019). The Benefits of External Audit Risk Assessment in the Auditing Process. Compliance Bridge. Retrieved from http://compliancebridge.com/external-audit-risk-assessment/

Harvard University, (2020). Preparing for an External Audit. Harvard University. Retrieved from https://rmas.fad.harvard.edu/pages/preparing-external-audit#:~:text=%20%20%201%20Obtain%20the%20list%20of,the%20status%20of%20the%20audit%20and…%20More%20