Papers, audit and assurance
Board papers, internal audit and assurance frameworks.
Around four hours on papers, audit and assurance: preparing agendas and board papers, structuring discussion and decisions, internal audit, the audit committee, assurance mapping and counter fraud.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 4 hours
- 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, committee chairs and officers who write for boards across the public and voluntary sectors
Overview
What reaches the board shapes what the board can see. This Focus is one strand of the Immerse A seat at the table and begins before the meeting, with Lencioni's four meeting types, agendas designed around what each item must achieve and papers that offer assurance rather than reassurance. It moves into the room with Kaner's Diamond of Participation, decision rules and Kline's Thinking Environment. Internal audit follows, from the Global Internal Audit Standards and Slough to the audit committee's role and lessons from Croydon. The final section brings in assurance mapping, the fictional Tir Glas Housing, Cressey's fraud triangle and the Home Office's six principles of reasonable prevention.
Aims
The goal is to raise the quality of what reaches the board and what the board does with it: papers people can trust, discussions that reach sound decisions, an audit committee that adds value and an assurance picture that shows where cover is duplicated or missing.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Write a board paper that offers assurance rather than reassurance, with an agenda item designed around what it must achieve.
- Use the Diamond of Participation and clear decision rules to chair or contribute to a board decision with confidence.
- Identify where assurance is duplicated or missing and where fraud risk sits, using assurance mapping and the fraud triangle.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Identify which of Lencioni's four meeting types fits a conversation and recognise the common signs of a mismatch.
- Plan a meeting opening and run each agenda item using the five moves of frame, clarify, debate, test and record.
- 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.
- Plan and build an assurance map in six steps, rating each source of assurance by its strength, recency and independence.
- Explain the fraud triangle of pressure, opportunity and rationalisation, and use it to reduce the conditions in which fraud occurs.
- Design an agenda that classifies each item for decision, discussion, assurance or noting, supported by a clear cover sheet and papers that distinguish assurance from reassurance.
- Use a four part summary and choose a decision rule, including motions and the casting vote, that fits the decision in front of the meeting.
Built from 3 parts.
4 hours of learning.
- 01From agenda to decisionMeeting agendas, papers and decision makingBitesize · Chairing Meetings, Boards and Committees2 modules
- 02The independent eyeInternal audit standards and audit committeesBitesize · Audit and Assurance2 modules
- 03Seeing the whole pictureBoard assurance frameworks and counter fraudBitesize · Audit and Assurance2 modules