What You Will Learn
1. Traditional Approaches to Risk Assessment
- traditional audit view of risk
- risk assessment defined
- common audit risk assessment practices
- the role of internal controls in assessing risk
- reversing the standard equation

2. Information Sources Required to Truly Determine Risk
- traditional sources of audit information
- the critical business unit
- alternative sources of relevant information

3. Maximizing Your Audits with Sound Data and Informed Judgment
- common auditing pitfalls
- taking a data inventory
- using data to maximize audit returns
- trend analysis: focusing the audit
- mean dispersion analysis: comparing alternatives
- an objective approach to risk analysis
- critical aspects of audit preparation

4. A Business-Risk Approach to Value-Added Audit Programs
- the traditional internal audit role vs. IA’s role today
- where does the real risk reside?
- a business approach to risk assessment

5. Focusing the Audit on Risk: A Multi-Level Approach
- the "barnyard approach to auditing"
- knowing the business: the internal audit difference
- the treeing-down concept
- auditing where risk equals exposure
- structuring your audit programs to minimize audit risk
- critical risk methodology

6. Risk Assessment in the Four Major Types of Audits
- financial audits
- operational audits
- information systems audits
- regulatory audits
- achieving totally integrated audits

7. Maximizing Your Value: Talking Business Not Audit
- dispelling false perceptions
- internal audit's identity crisis
- speaking the language of management and the board
- clearly establishing internal audit's value
- avoiding the big "O"