Published: 24 April 2024
As audit functions embed data analytics in more workflows, audit teams need to know how to identify and prepare datasets to produce quality insights. Chief audit executives can use this research to guide their team’s understanding of how to effectively scope, source and clean data before analysis.
Although there is an abundance of data in organizations, some auditors still struggle to effectively evaluate the quality of datasets and prepare data for analysis. This skill gap often leads to data errors that undermine audit engagements.
Auditors typically start their audit engagements by collecting data and then identifying questions they want to answer with that data, but this approach often leads to data biases and inaccurate conclusions.
To increase the quality of audit’s data insights, effective audit functions train their auditors to properly scope data, determine its reliability, and clean it for analysis. Effective functions approach identifying and preparing
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