Two difficulties in internal audit activities?

Difficulties in internal audit activities

Macro interests and micro interests are difficult to coordinate. The state and the market subject are two different interest subjects, and there are certain differences in the ways of pursuing interests. When there is a contradiction between the micro interests of market participants and the macro interests of the country, it is generally manifested as the erosion of the latter by the former. At this time, internal audit should not only protect the interests of the state from damage, but also safeguard the interests of market participants, so that internal audit institutions often fall into a dilemma of balancing interests. Internal auditors are often influenced by their positions and environment, starting from their own interests, pursuing the "maximization of interests" of market players, thus damaging national interests to varying degrees.

It is difficult to unify supervision and service. The essence of internal audit is both supervision and service, but how to unify supervision and service is another manifestation of internal audit contradiction. Practice shows that the basic function of internal audit is verification and evaluation. Verification, that is, verification and confirmation of the results of entrusted economic responsibility; Evaluation, that is, report to the principal responsible person, indicating the audit conclusion. The reason why internal audit has the function of supervision is because the internal audit institution is defined as an independent authority and authorized, which shows that one kind of power behavior can control another kind of power behavior, and its supervision essence is reflected. From this point of view, supervision should be the first and have the power of enforcement, which forms the secondary feature of internal audit service function. The former shows mandatory objectives and uses mandatory means, while the former and the latter have asymmetry in policies and methods, thus forming a contradiction between supervision and service functions.

Independent status cannot be reflected. Independence is a prerequisite for internal audit. However, due to the intervention of unit leaders, the restriction of interest relations and the influence of interpersonal relationships, internal auditors often cannot carry out their work objectively, truly, fairly and comprehensively. Due to the lack of independent status and authoritative evaluation, internal audit opinions and handling decisions are often not effectively implemented due to the influence of management system.

Audit decision-making and implementation effect is difficult to reach the designated position. "Audit is easy, but implementation is difficult", which is another outstanding problem of internal audit. As far as objective reasons are concerned, due to the migration of time and the change of personnel, audit conclusions and decisions can not be implemented and handled in time; Management is lax and disorderly, or there is no chapter to follow, or there are rules to follow, so it is shelved. Therefore, it is difficult to investigate and deal with violations. As far as subjective factors are concerned, many economic problems are related to the reality of "black veil" at all levels, and the interests of * * * can easily form a power network. Although "pull out the radish and bring it out of the mud", although the radish with modern characteristics is exposed under the mud, after careful protection and purposeful adaptation by the "power network", the major issues are reduced, and the corruption found in the internal audit can still be rotted and undefeated. The "radish" is still the same, and the "black veil" is still the same.

The quality of internal audit is difficult to match. Because the primary stage of internal audit development is mainly financial audit aimed at finding mistakes and preventing fraud, most internal auditors come from accounting departments, with generally low professional quality and unreasonable structure. With the improvement of modern market subject system, internal audit extends from simple financial audit to internal control system, and finally turns to benefit evaluation. The quality of internal auditors does not meet the requirements of internal audit development, which ultimately affects the quality of internal audit work.

The master-slave relationship between internal audit and external audit is difficult to embody. Among the three major audits that constitute the audit supervision system, the state audit is dominant, while the internal audit and social audit are subordinate. However, in practice, the three major audits are independent and irreplaceable in different fields, and their leading and subordinate relationship is difficult to reflect. Although "Audit Law" has long stipulated that internal audit should be guided and supervised by national audit, because internal audit is between external guidance and competent leadership, internal audit work is often at a loss, and the establishment of master-slave relationship needs further improvement of external environment.

The relationship between internal auditors and internal relations is complicated. There is a relationship between the internal auditor and other members of the market subject, such as leadership and being led, and a derivative relationship with leaders at all levels. In addition, there is the relationship with department managers. Compared with a specific audit project, these relationships more or less interfere with internal auditors from all aspects. This kind of interference will often compromise the internal auditor's report to ensure that the internal managers can accept it. This is also one of the fundamental reasons why the internal audit work of market players is difficult to play its role and achieve orderly operation.

Methods and measures of internal audit work

Establish and improve internal audit institutions. Perfecting the internal audit system is the requirement of the development of modern productive forces and the key to standardizing modern market players. First of all, we should reasonably define the internal audit function; Second, we must ensure the independence of internal audit. To define the internal audit function reasonably, we should restrain and supervise the internal decentralization behavior of market participants from the perspective of market participants and on the premise of meeting the needs of managers. To establish and improve internal audit institutions, we should shift from the historical audit of simple error detection to the expected evaluation of market subjects, and realize the whole process control of market subjects before, during and after the event by refining decentralized control procedures. On this basis, the internal audit function should be designed and defined according to the personality characteristics and control characteristics of market subjects. The independence of internal audit is the soul of audit. Without independence, any conclusion of audit will lose its independent control function. Internal audit is the product of decentralized management and hierarchical management of market subjects, and independence is established according to this decentralized system. Independence has two meanings. First, the internal audit department should be independent of the supervised department, which is the guarantee for it to perform its duties. Second, internal audit should have independent citation right, which is the guarantee of law enforcement. Therefore, the independence system of internal audit should reflect: the internal audit business should be entrusted and authorized by the top management; The personnel of the internal audit department shall be appointed by the top management; The financial accounting of the internal audit department is not restricted by other departments, especially the financial accounting department; Internal auditors do not participate in the audited business activities.

Strengthen the institutionalization of internal audit. The internal audit institution is established according to the requirements of the national audit law and should be guided by the national audit department. Internal audit and external audit have different emphases, but the audit object is the financial and financial revenue and expenditure of market subjects. With the gradual improvement of China's market economic system, the gradual standardization of legal system construction and the strengthening of the concept of law-abiding by market subjects, commercial subjects will gradually move towards standardization and operate according to law. Both internal audit and external audit can achieve fair audit evaluation and accurate conclusion, and the purpose of audit will tend to be consistent.

Improve the quality of internal auditors. To improve the quality of internal auditors, we should not only improve the political and economic benefits, but also strengthen the on-the-job training of internal auditors, supplemented by the introduction of necessary compound talents. This is the fundamental guarantee to reduce audit risk, reduce audit cost and achieve the expected audit goal, and it is also an effective means to solve the contradiction between internal audit quality and quality.

Select the focus of internal audit. The focus of internal audit work should be shifted from post-audit to pre-audit and post-audit in time, so that post-audit can be organically combined with pre-audit and post-audit In terms of work content, it will shift from investigating violations of discipline and discipline to internal control system audit and performance audit. Through the establishment of internal audit index system, we can improve the efficiency of capital operation and serve the innovative management system and operation mechanism. As far as content is concerned, performance audit includes the audit of the structure, quality, utilization degree, fund raising, cost accounting of economic activities, quality control and investment benefit of human resources. It has certain predictability and is backed by standardized and scientific audit procedures. In China, performance auditing is carried out slowly and lacks detailed performance standards, so we can only refer to imperfect industry standards. Therefore, performance audit can only focus on the feasibility analysis and evaluation of the decision-making process.

Realize the comprehensive integration of internal audit elements. Whether it is the internal audit of the unit or the "superior-subordinate audit" within the system, the audit mode should be changed from the current audit mode of combining the basic audit of accounting statements with the basic audit of internal control system to the audit mode of combining the basic audit of internal control system with the business-oriented risk audit. Due to the environmental changes of market players and the networking of information systems in the future, auditing is required to pay attention to risk inspection and comprehensively integrate internal auditing factors, that is, the combination of enterprise self-auditing and economic responsibility auditing; Combination of internal audit and term audit; Combining audit verification with investigation and analysis; Combination of detailed investigation and spot check; The combination of economic responsibility audit and outgoing handover audit.

Realize the informationization of internal audit. The transformation from manual audit to computer-aided audit requires the establishment of an internal audit opinion database to cooperate with it. On the one hand, it can let internal auditors refer to the opinions and experiences of other inspectors, on the other hand, it can standardize internal audit analysis and opinions, and finally conduct computer audit.