Internal Control Interview Questions And Answers
Question: 1. What Is The Control Environment?
Answer:
The manage surroundings, which is the foundation for the other components of inner manage, provides field and structure through setting the tone of an employer and influencing control awareness.
Factors to do not forget in assessing the patron’s control surroundings consist of:
Integrity and moral values, which include (1) management’s movements to remove or mitigate incentives and temptations on the a part of personnel to dedicate cheating, illegal, or unethical acts, (2) coverage statements, and (three) codes of conduct
Commitment to competence, together with management’s consideration of competence tiers for specific responsibilities and the way the ones degrees translate into essential abilities and information.
Board of administrators or audit committee participation, which include interplay with inner and external (impartial) auditors
Management’s philosophy and working fashion, along with control’s attitude and actions concerning monetary reporting, in addition to management’s technique to taking and monitoring dangers
The entity’s organizational shape
Assignment of authority and duty, including pleasant task responsibilities
Human useful resource guidelines and practices, which includes those referring to hiring, orientation, training, comparing, counseling, promoting, and compensating employees
Question: 2. What Is Meant By Risk Assessment?
Answer:
An entity’s risk evaluation for financial reporting purposes is its identification, evaluation, and management of dangers referring to financial declaration guidance. Accordingly, chance evaluation may additionally remember the possibility of finished transactions that stay unrecorded.
The following inner and external events and situations can be applicable to the threat of getting ready monetary statements that aren’t in conformity with normally common accounting concepts [or another comprehensive basis of accounting]:
Changes in working surroundings, which includes competitive pressures
New personnel which have a extraordinary angle on internal manipulate
Rapid boom that could bring about a breakdown in controls
New era in statistics systems and manufacturing methods
New strains, merchandise, or activities
Corporate restructuring that might result in changes in supervision and segregation of task capabilities
Foreign operations
Accounting pronouncements requiring adoption of latest accounting principles
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Question: three. What Are Tests Of Controls?
Answer:
SAS fifty five defines assessments of controls as checks directed in the direction of the layout or operation of an internal manipulate to evaluate its effectiveness in stopping or detecting fabric misstatements in a financial assertion announcement. Inquiry of organisation personnel, inspection of consumer files and statistics, observation of patron activities, and re-overall performance of controls represent a number of the strategies used in appearing checks of controls.
Question: four. How Do I Assess Control Risk?
Answer:
If the auditor concludes, based totally on his or her expertise of inner control, that controls are probably to be useless or that evaluation of their effectiveness would be inefficient, then the auditor may determine control risk on the most degree for a few or all monetary declaration assertions.
If precise controls are probably to prevent or locate cloth misstatements and the auditor plays checks of controls on the way to compare the effectiveness of the controls diagnosed, then assessment of manage hazard under the most level is permissible.
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Question: 5. What Control Activities Are Applicable To A Financial Statement Audit?
Answer:
Control activities are the policies and techniques management has implemented which will make certain that directives are completed.
Control sports that may be applicable to a financial statement audit can be labeled into the subsequent categories:
Performance evaluations, together with comparisons of actual overall performance with budgets, forecasts, and previous period consequences.
Information processing. Controls referring to facts processing are generally designed to confirm accuracy, completeness, and authorization of transactions. Specifically, controls may be categorised as fashionable controls or application controls. General controls may include controls over statistics center operations, systems software acquisition and maintenance, and get entry to safety; application controls observe to the processing of man or woman applications and are designed to make certain that transactions which are recorded are valid, authorized, and whole.
Physical controls, which involve good enough safeguards over the get right of entry to to belongings and data, encompass authorization for get admission to to laptop programs and files and periodic counting and comparison with quantities shown on manage records.
Segregation of responsibilities, that’s designed to lessen possibilities that allow any character to be in a function to both perpetrate and hide errors or fraud inside the normal route of his or her responsibilities, includes assigning special humans the responsibilities of authorizing transactions, recording transactions, and maintaining custody of property.
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Question: 6. What Knowledge About The “statistics And Communication Systems Support” Component Should An Auditor Obtain?
Answer:
The auditor should gain sufficient know-how approximately the records machine relevant to monetary reporting. The facts device usually includes the techniques and records set up to report, technique, summarize, and report entity transactions and to hold accountability of related property, liabilities, and equity. Communication includes offering an knowledge of individual roles and responsibilities pertaining to inner manage over financial reporting.
Question: 7. What Is Meant By Monitoring?
Answer:
Monitoring is management’s method of assessing the high-quality of internal control performance through the years. Accordingly, control should investigate the layout and operation of controls on a timely foundation and take vital corrective moves.
Monitoring may additionally involve:
separate opinions, the usage of inner auditors, and using communications from outside parties (e.G., complaints from clients and regulator remarks).
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Question: eight. Is There A Relationship Between Internal Control Objectives And Components?
Answer:
There is a right away relationship between targets and additives. This outcomes from the fact that targets are what an entity strives to attain, even as additives are what an entity desires to gain the targets. It is also important to remember that inner control is relevant no longer simplest to the complete entity, but additionally to an entity’s running devices and commercial enterprise capabilities.
Question: nine. What Objectives And Controls Are Relevant To A Financial Statement Audit?
Answer:
In trendy, the auditor have to don’t forget the controls that pertain to the entity’s goal of preparing economic statements for external use which are offered pretty in conformity with usually everyday accounting ideas (GAAP) or a few other comprehensive foundation of accounting other than GAAP (OCBOA).
The controls referring to operations and compliance objectives may be relevant to a economic assertion audit if they pertain to information the auditor evaluates or makes use of. For example, the auditor may also keep in mind the controls relevant to nonfinancial data (which include manufacturing facts) utilized in analytical techniques.
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Question: 10. What Is The Auditor’s Primary Consideration With Respect To The Components Of Internal Control?
Answer:
The auditor’s number one attention is whether a selected manage influences the economic statement assertions as opposed to its category into any unique element. Although the 5 components are relevant to each audit,
they ought to be taken into consideration in the context of the subsequent:
Entity length
Organization and possession characteristics
Nature of the entity’s business
Diversity and complexity of operations
Methods of transmitting, processing, maintaining, and gaining access to statistics
Applicable legal and regulatory requirements
Question: eleven. How Does Information Technology (it) Affect Internal Control?
Answer:
An entity’s use of IT can also affect any of the five interrelated additives of internal manipulate.
Controls in structures that use IT consist of a combination of computerized controls (e.G., controls embedded in laptop applications) and guide controls.
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Question: 12. What Are The Potential Benefits Of It To Internal Control?
Answer:
IT affords ability advantages of effectiveness and efficiency for inner control as it allows the entity to:
Consistently practice predefined policies and carry out complex calculations in processing huge volumes of transactions or information.
Enhance the timeliness, availability, and accuracy of data.
Facilitate the additional analysis of information.
Enhance the ability to monitor the overall performance of the entity’s sports and its policies and strategies.
Reduce the hazard that controls will be circumvented.
Enhance the capacity to attain effective segregation of obligations by means of imposing security controls in applications, databases, and operating systems.
Auditing Interview Questions
Question: thirteen. What Risks Does It Pose To Internal Control?
Answer:
IT poses precise dangers to internal manage, which include:
Reliance on faulty systems or applications
Unauthorized get right of entry to to statistics that could result in destruction of statistics or mistaken alterations to statistics.
Unauthorized changes to master documents
Unauthorized changes to systems or applications
Failure to make essential adjustments to structures or applications
Inappropriate manual intervention
Potential lack of information
Question: 14. To What Extent Must I Consider The Client’s Internal Control?
Answer:
The practitioner have to acquire a sufficient knowledge of inner manage to enable the right planning of the audit. Whether controls have been located in operations is of high importance. Operating effectiveness isn’t to be judged with the aid of the practitioner.
The know-how of the inner control ought to:
provide a basis for identifying types of capacity misstatements, enable the assessment of the hazard that such misstatements will arise, and
permit the auditor to layout important tests.
Question: 15. What Are The Procedures Used To Obtain An Understanding Of Internal Control?
Answer:
Ordinarily, a combination of the subsequent strategies is utilized in acquiring a enough knowledge of inner control:
Previous experience with the patron
Inquiry of suitable patron employees
Observation of purchaser sports
Reference to prior year operating papers
Inspection of customer-prepared descriptions, along with organization charts and accounting manuals.
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Question: 16. How Should I Document My Understanding Of Internal Control?
Answer:
The auditor must workout professional judgment in determining the methods and extent of documentation.
The most frequently used strategies of documentation are:
Flowcharts
Question:naires
Narrative memos (written descriptions)
Question: 17. What Is Meant By Assessing Control Risk?
Answer:
The evaluation of manipulate hazard is a technique of evaluating the effectiveness of a customer’s internal controls in stopping and detecting cloth misstatements inside the economic statements.
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