内部审计报告不要说的10件事.docVIP

?10 Things Not to Say in an Internal Audit Report? 1. Dont say, Ma?????nagement should consider . . . Audit reports should offer solid recommendations for specific actions. When our recommendation is merely to?consider?something, even the most urgent call to action can become nebulous. No auditor wants a management response that says merely, Okay, well consider it. 2. Dont us??e weasel words. Its tempting to hedge our words with phrases such as it seems that or our impression is, or there appears to be. It may feel safer to avoid being specific, but when you have too many hedges, particularly in the same sentence, theres a danger that you are not presenting well-supported facts. Report readers need to know they can rely on our facts, and overuse of weasel words can make solid recommendations sound a little too much like hunches. 3. Use i?ntensifiers sparingly. Because they can add emphasis, words such as clearly, special, well, or very might seem to be the opposite of weasel words. In actuality, these intensifiers are so nonspecific that they can be another type of weaseling. Intensifiers raise questions such as significant compared with what? and clearly according to whose criteria? If you use intensifiers freely, two readers of the same report may be left with very different impressions: Numbers such as 23 percent or $3 billion tell a story, but just what does very large mean? 4. The problem i??s rarely universal. Its good to be specific, but theres a danger in words such as everything, nothing, never, or always. You always and you never can be fighting words that can distract readers into looking for exceptions to the rule rather than examining the real issue. Its safe to say you tested 10 transactions and none was approved — less safe to say transactions are never approved. 5. Avoid the bl??ame game. The purpose of internal audit reports is to bring about positive change, not to assign blame. Were more likely to achieve buy-in when our reports come across as neu