Does your audit need a deep clean?

Taking a step back to consider an audit; the benefits, the aims, drivers, and it’s uncanny to think many of the things that seem to resonate in our everyday activities and appear obvious can sometimes be overlooked in practice when compared with our working environment.

By way of an analogy, we wash our clothes, we jet wash our cars and hoover our floors/carpets on a regular basis. Why do we do this? because we want them to look as clean, orderly, and presentable as they possibly can, therefore wouldn’t the same principles apply when conducting an audit…?

We use the above examples to compare, because hoovering a carpet is all well and good, it’s a quick and easy way to collect dust and debris, however, does this deep clean the surface and get right into the corners and fibres of the carpet? Is this conducting an exercise that gives a 100% access, awareness and assurance or is this merely skimming the surface?

The need to deliver an audit that is accurate, concise, and completely transparent in its nature is of upmost importance to organisations, as this reflects performance, gives insight, and provides an opportunity to direct future business decisions, therefore are we best served vacuuming anomalies that can be seen on the surface or conducting a thorough deep clean, ensuring complete sanitation?

In our experience, Data Analytics is the equivalent of a deep clean approach, dusting down, jet washing, carpet cleaning your data in preparation for an audit all in one go and finding those tiny specks of dust that can sometimes make a huge difference to the overall appearance, so for your next audit, do you choose to vacuum or deep clean?