The last phase of a project is the closing phase. As internal audits are a type of project, all internal audits have a closing phase. In general, internal audits are terminated by “extinction”; this is generally because once an audit is successfully completed, no further work is required. This happens after the final audit report is submitted to stakeholders and the exit meeting occurs-these are the primary closing deliverables for internal audits.
For the final audit report, many of the same topics suggested by The PMBOK® Guide – Sixth Edition to include in a final project report are also integrated into the internal audit report. Such topics are:
- The executive summary, which is similar to a project’s summary level description.
- A recap of the audit objective and scope, which is similar to recapping a project’s scope objectives.
- Summary of high-risk issues, which is similar to summarizing the risks and issues encountered during the project.
Additionally, the exit meeting held generally includes the same topics as presented in the final report and is presented to the stakeholders. Most of the items discussed are the medium and high-level issues noted throughout the audit, what the root cause is, and suggestions for remediation.
However, there are some project closing actions that internal audit does not do during audit closeout that would benefit internal audit for performing the same audit in the future. One such action is completing a lessons learned report. Identifying lessons learned throughout the audit and summarizing them at the close of the project can be useful to the internal audit department as it describes what went well and what did not go well. This allows for, when the audit comes up again in the future, auditors to make sure they incorporate items that went well and remove, plan, or mitigate the items that did not go well.
Until Next Time,
CPack
Project Management for Internal Auditors 