Shatter Silos to Identify More Risk

If you want to increase the effectiveness of your audits and find risks that haven’t been identified before, you need to shatter your silos so you can identify more risk.

Too often, audits are performed on one process, one category, or one system: Earning Commissions, Windows Servers, or Wire Transfer. Each one of those is a separate silo (one for oats, one for corn, one for rice).

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Compare Multiple Fields with Excel vlookup (Easy)

When you need to determine whether several fields in 2 Excel documents (or tabs) match, all you need to do is combine the fields in each document into one value and then compare the 2 values using vlookup.

You could do this many ways, but if you’re new to Excel formulas, I think this way is easier to configure and understand. I’m assuming you’re familar with the basics of Excel and vlookup already.

If you are not familiar with vlookup, you might want to review this first, as my post does not teach you vlookup, just another way to use it.

No Bad Audit Reports Allowed?

It’s getting to the point where some audit directors are saying, “No bad audit reports allowed.” In other words, don’t shoot the messenger, just the message. What follows is an experience from one of my audit colleagues…

First, a couple “I know” statements…I know auditors are supposed to be helpful and friendly. I know auditors are supposed to add value. I know auditors need to be careful about giving only bad news; we should also note in our report what the auditee is doing right (if anything). I know that it’s hard for auditees to get hammered again and again by audit reports.