Independent Enough?
Twelve engagements an in-house audit function is actually offered. Independence is not a yes or no — it is a threat, and the question is whether a safeguard a sceptical reader would accept reaches it.
1. You wrote the control matrix for the new expenses system last year, at the project's request. The system is now on the plan for a controls audit.
2. Your predecessor as head of IA designed the payment approval workflow while seconded to finance. They left eighteen months ago. It is now in scope.
3. You are asked to sit on the steering committee for the ERP replacement as a voting member, so audit has a voice in the design decisions.
4. The CFO asks IA to run the quarterly reconciliation for two months while a vacancy is filled. It is routine work and you have the capacity.
5. An auditor on your team is married to the warehouse manager. The engagement is a stock count observation at that warehouse.
6. You recommended the vendor that won the case management tender, on the strength of a market scan you produced. The implementation is now in scope.
7. The audit committee chair asks you privately for your read on the CFO's capability before a performance discussion.
8. You audited procurement three years running. Nothing has been found for two cycles and the same auditor has led each time.
9. Management asks IA to facilitate a risk workshop — running the session, not setting the risks or owning the output.
10. The head of IA's annual bonus is set by the CFO and is partly tied to the finance function's control-testing results.
11. A team member did a two-week secondment into treasury four years ago as a graduate. Treasury is in scope this year.
12. IA is asked to design the remediation plan for a finding it raised, because the business does not know where to start.
Educational. Independence requirements differ by standard and by sector; what transfers is the discipline of naming the threat before reaching for a safeguard, and of noticing that declining work independence never barred has a cost too.