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Audit Approach 

Our audit approach begins with risk assessment and ends with risk analysis. The key to every step along the way is your active involvement. Your knowledge and expertise are the ingredients for ensuring the work we do will have a positive impact. 

Risk Assessment 

Managing our risks is important to fully realize the opportunities we have as an organization. These opportunities are expressed in our objectives, whether these are strategic, operational, patient care or compliance oriented. 

Risk assessment is thinking about what may inhibit or delay achieving our objectives. We rely on your understanding of your strategy, operations and external environment as critical input in assessing risk.  

One result of the risk assessment process is focusing internal audit resources on the most critical risk areas for the achievement of organizational objectives. This is expressed in the Audit Plan. 

Audit Performance 

If we are performing an audit in one of your areas of responsibility, your active engagement with us can positively impact your unit’s ability to achieve its objectives. 

Planning 

In this phase of our work, we are reviewing any information that will assist us in defining the purpose and scope of the internal audit. You can be a valuable part of this phase by providing requested information and suggesting any relevant documents.  

We will have an audit kick-off meeting and look to you to help determine who should be involved. We will discuss the proposed objective and scope for the work, and you can share with us any concerns you have, ask questions and make suggestions before the objectives and scope of the work are finalized. 

Field Work 

As we perform our audit procedures, we will keep you apprised of results and observations. We ask that you review the work and engage with us to ensure the root cause is identified and begin considering management actions plans to correct any major issues. We understand resources are limited, and our promise to you is to focus on critical issues for resolution, not additional busy work that adds no appreciable improvement to performance. 

Reporting 

We want our reports to be to the point and actionable. Your review of the draft is vital to ensuring this. As part of this phase, we will work with you to reach agreeable management action plans. Like you, we want the best solution to address identified issues. 

Follow-up 

Once an action plan has been agreed to with a timeline for implementation, we rely on you to build the solution into your operational workflow. We will circle back with you shortly after the implementation due date to assess the actions you have taken. This may involve some testing to gauge effectiveness for addressing the audit issue. 

Risk Analysis 

To complete the loop, we update our risk assessment with information we have learned from each audit performed. To keep pace with the speed of business, a continuous assessment of emerging risks and a dynamic audit plan that can shift to address the most critical areas in a timely manner is essential. Each of you, as leaders of your area, are needed if we are to realize the success we envision for our students, patients, and communities. 

Consulting Engagements 

With our skill set, experience and disciplined approach, we can assist with process redesign, research, data collection and strategic thinking through a consulting engagement. Through assessment and evaluation, we will provide you with an extra set of hands or objective sets of eyes.  

In a consulting engagement, you determine the objectives and scope of our work. There is no formal audit report, and no cost to you or your team for our services.  

If you identify or have a concern about an emerging risk, please contact Chief Audit and Compliance Officer, Jim Grimes at jgrimes@umsystem.edu.