ITPEC IP October 2018 Question 63
A system auditor is required to have an independent and professional standpoint. When a system audit is performed in a company, which of the following is the example that contradicts with the independence of the system auditor?
Explanation
An auditor from the information systems department auditing that same department — the auditor would be judging work of their own unit, which breaks independence.
A system auditor must be independent of the audited party both in appearance (organizationally) and in mind (without bias). An auditor who belongs to the department being audited is in a self-review position: the findings concern their own colleagues, superiors and possibly their own work, and the reporting line runs through the same department. The audit must be done by someone outside that department, such as an internal audit department reporting to top management, or an external auditor.
Answer (c)
Why not others:
- •(a) — an external certified public accountant does not belong to the company, so is independent of the financial accounting system audited
- •(b) — an auditor from an outside consulting company is independent of the information systems department
- •(d) — the internal audit department is a separate unit from the information systems department, so its auditor is organizationally independent of the audited department
Key rule: Independence means the auditor is not part of, and not under the authority of, the function being audited; auditing one's own department is the classic violation.
System Audit · AI-written, may contain errors
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