We are being asked to benchmark ourselves against the required hours of Continuing Professional Education (CPE) or other training for internal audit professionals. Could you please share how many hours are mandated by your internal audit management or your organization as a whole?

Hi there,

It depends if the auditor is certified or not.

For a practicing internal auditor who is not certified, there is no strict requirement for Continuing Professional Education (CPE) hours, as CPE requirements are usually tied to maintaining a certification like CIA (Certified Internal Auditor) or CPA (Certified Public Accountant).

However, best practices suggest that internal auditors should aim for at least 20 to 40 CPE hours per year to stay current with industry trends, methodologies, and regulations.

If the auditor is CIA certified, then he/she must complete 40 CPE hours annually, or 20 hours if non-practicing.

Hope this helps!
Yazan

Nossa meta são 75h /auditor / ano.

We have an 80 hrs over a 2 years goal, with a target of 40 a year.  This gives us some flexibility if we come up short or this years budget is tighter than expected.

Our audit function requires 40 CPE hours per year.

There are several standards you could base your CPE expectations upon: 1) regulatory target, such as basing on the IIA standard to keep CIA certification, and State Board of Accountancy standards to for licensees to keep their CPA licenses, or 2) industry standards based on other companies' efforts.  A recent benchmarking exercise, included CPE requirements of the staff and 3 week (15 days) training target for employees with "X" years experience or less in internal auditing far exceeded the average.  Of course more training means you need a bigger budget if you want quality CPE.  Spending hours doing online eLearning isn't necessarily the ticket to success.  If you required 40 hours CPE per auditor per year, this puts you comfortably in the middle of the bell curve.