Auditing Standards . These standards serve to measure the quality of the audit objectives and the actions taken to achieve them.
Summary
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- 1 General Standards. Purpose
- 2 Professional Capacity. First Standard
- 3 Second Standard
- 4 Due Professional Care. Third Standard
- 5 Quality Control. Fourth Standard
- 6 Bibliography
General Standards. Purpose
These standards refer to the professional capacity of the staff, the independence of the audit organization and its staff, the due professional care with which the audit must be carried out and the respective reports prepared, and the application of quality controls. The general rules are distinguished from those related to the execution of the work and the preparation of the corresponding reports.
Professional capacity. First Standard
The personnel designated to practice the audit must possess, as a whole, the professional capacity necessary to carry out the tasks required.
The organization of audits must adopt policies and procedures to obtain the personnel with the appropriate qualities as well as to develop and train them to be able to carry out their tasks effectively.
This standard imposes the responsibility on the audit organization to ensure that the audit is carried out by personnel who as a whole possess the knowledge and skills necessary to carry it out.
Personnel must also have extensive knowledge of the specific environment in which the audited entity operates, in relation to the nature of the audit being performed.
The requirements related to professional capacity refer to the knowledge and experience of the audit organization as a whole and not necessarily those of each individual auditor.
Independence. Second Standard
In all matters related to Auditing , the audit organization and auditors must be free of personal and external impediments to proceed independently from the organizational point of view and maintain an independent attitude and appearance.
This Standard imposes on the auditor and the audit organization the responsibility of preserving their independence to ensure that their opinions, conclusions, judgments and recommendations are impartial and are thus considered by third parties.
Both auditors, external consultants and other audit specialists must generally consider three kinds of impediments to their independence: personal, external and organizational.
If any of these impediments limits the auditor’s ability to perform his or her job and to report its results impartially, he or she should refrain from conducting the audit or, in those situations where it can be done, state his or her impairment in the section of the report that is refer to the scope of the audit.
Due Professional Care. Third Standard
Due professional care will be taken in executing the audit and preparing the corresponding reports. This standard requires the auditor to perform his or her work with due professional care, and to be responsible for complying with generally accepted auditing standards.
Proceeding with due professional care means correctly using the criteria to determine the scope of the audit and to select the methods, techniques , tests and other audit procedures to be applied in it, as well as to evaluate the results and to present the corresponding reports. .
Auditors must use sound professional judgment to determine the applicable auditing standards in the work they are to perform. The determination that certain standards are not applicable to the audit must be documented in the working papers. Although this standard establishes that both the auditor and the audit organization are responsible for exercising due professional care in the performance of an audit, this does not imply unlimited liability, nor does it imply infallibility on the part of the auditor or the audit organization. .
QA. Fourth Standard
Audit organizations must have an appropriate internal quality control system and be subject to an external quality review program.
The internal quality control system implemented by the audit organization should provide reasonable assurance that audit standards have been adopted and complied with and appropriate audit procedures have been established.
The external quality control review program should be aimed at determining whether the organization has established an internal quality control system and whether it is operating efficiently to provide reasonable assurance that applicable auditing standards are being met, established procedures and policies.
Quality review work should be aimed at determining whether:
- The organization supervises the audit in all phases of the work and if it is satisfactory.
- Applicable auditing standards are followed.
- The quality of the audit reports and the documents that support it is met.
The audit organization of the body or organism carries out the revisions previously expressed to the audit units of the companies and budgeted units that are subordinate to it, if these exist. In order to ensure efficiency, this standard is applicable at least once every two years, to all audit organizations.
