Assurance you can rely on

Who It's For

Board members, trustees, audit committee members and senior officers in public services and the voluntary sector

Overview

Boards rarely fail for lack of reports; they fail when they mistake reassurance for evidence. The second half of the Immerse A seat at the table begins with internal audit, the Global Internal Audit Standards and the Slough Borough Council case, then the audit committee as CIPFA describes it, with lessons from Croydon and Brick by Brick. Assurance mapping follows, using the fictional Tir Glas Housing, then fraud through Donald Cressey's fraud triangle and the failure to prevent fraud offence. Risk runs from the ISO 31000 process and the Airbus A380 to appetite and tolerance at Wells Fargo, closing with ethical culture and a capstone including Thurrock Council's solar investments.

Aims

It is designed to help board and audit committee members put evidence before trust: drawing a clear picture of their organisation's assurance, asking sharper questions of auditors, recognising fraud risk, writing a risk appetite that changes decisions and noticing what the culture is really telling them.

In summary, you will be able to:

1. 1Use the Global Internal Audit Standards and lessons from Slough and Croydon to ask sharper questions of auditors and the audit committee.
2. 2Design an assurance map that shows where assurance is strong, duplicated or missing, using the fictional Tir Glas Housing.
3. 3Write a risk appetite statement that changes decisions, learning from Wells Fargo and the Thurrock Council solar investment failure.

What you'll develop

Across this Explore, you will develop the ability to:

1. 1Describe the structure of the Global Internal Audit Standards and the role they give the board or audit committee in governing internal audit.
2. 2Explain the core functions of an audit committee and why its independence from management is its greatest asset.
3. 3Plan and build an assurance map in six steps, rating each source of assurance by its strength, recency and independence.
4. 4Explain the fraud triangle of pressure, opportunity and rationalisation, and use it to reduce the conditions in which fraud occurs.
5. 5Use Failure Mode and Effects Analysis and the Structured What If Technique to identify risks precisely, asking how a process could fail rather than whether it will.
6. 6Distinguish risk appetite, risk tolerance and risk capacity and explain why a board needs all three.
7. 7Explain the difference between the moral person and the moral manager and why both are needed to be seen as an ethical leader.
8. 8Apply the programme's ethical themes, from blind spots to culture, to analyse a real or illustrative case.