Accounts, audit and integrity
Reading accounts, audit committees and codes of conduct.
Three and a half hours on accounts, audit and integrity: reading accounts in your sector, ratios and warning signs, internal audit and the audit committee, codes of conduct, and interests, gifts and hospitality.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 3 hours 30 minutes
- Where
- Boards and governance
- Price
- £69
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Board members, trustees and non-executives in councils, health, housing and the voluntary sector
Overview
A board member need not be an accountant, but must read the numbers and hold to public standards. Drawn from the Immerse Ready for the boardroom, this Focus shows how sectors report under different rulebooks while answering the same questions, including what the new Charities SORP changes. It treats ratios as questions across liquidity, solvency, resilience and performance, reading Carillion, where the signals sat in plain view. Internal audit and the audit committee follow, with Slough and Croydon. Its final part covers codes of conduct, Welsh and English standards systems, and conflicts of interest from Porter versus Magill to Greensill Capital.
Aims
This Focus is built to help board members find the story in a set of accounts, work constructively with their audit committee and recognise a conflict before it becomes a problem, so they can read closely, ask plainly and act with the integrity the public expects.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Explain how accounts in your sector answer the same core questions under different rulebooks, including what the new Charities SORP changes.
- Use liquidity, solvency, resilience and performance ratios as questions, spotting warning signs of the kind visible before Carillion collapsed.
- Apply codes of conduct and the Porter versus Magill test to recognise and manage a conflict of interest before it becomes a problem.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Compare the rulebooks and main statements used by companies, charities, councils, housing associations and NHS bodies, and translate between them.
- Explain the four families of ratios and what the current ratio, days cash on hand, gearing, interest cover, reserves cover and operating margin each reveal.
- Describe the structure of the Global Internal Audit Standards and the role they give the board or audit committee in governing internal audit.
- Explain the core functions of an audit committee and why its independence from management is its greatest asset.
- Distinguish a code of conduct, which sets minimum standards, from a behavioural framework, which describes what good looks like.
- Distinguish actual, potential and perceived conflicts of interest and apply the fair-minded and informed observer test.
- Explain why a council's CIES deficit differs from its budget position, and what Charities SORP 2026 changes for trustees.
- Apply a five-step discipline of define, trend, compare, set limits and ask to turn a ratio pack into board questions.
Built from 3 parts.
3 hours 30 minutes of learning.
- 01Reading between the linesReading accounts and spotting warning signsBitesize · Finance for Non Finance Professionals2 modules
- 02The independent eyeInternal audit standards and audit committeesBitesize · Audit and Assurance2 modules
- 03Clear lines on interestsCodes of conduct, gifts and hospitalityBitesize · Ethics, Integrity and Standards2 modules