As part of Touchstone Insights for Internal Audit, we asked a series of questions about Internal Audit’s focus and where auditors spend their time. Then, we asked more indirect questions, which enabled us to look for correlations in the data and test our hypotheses on what drives decision making in internal audit departments.
Internal audit teams broadly agree on their mission, but each internal audit department makes individual decisions about focus and shorter-term priorities as they balance required assurance work (like compliance activities), with other risks and areas where there are opportunities to add value.