# Selecting and Planning Audits for Return on Investment Course (Self-Paced)

Canonical URL: <https://www.graduateschool.edu/courses/selecting-and-planning-audits-for-return-on-investment-course-self-paced>

## Overview

Selecting performance audits to conduct is like building a successful investment portfolio. Developing meaningful objectives helps ensure each audit efficiently and effectively achieves meaningful results. Together, selecting the right audits and clear objectives provides a return on investment that is highly valued, relevant, and meaningful to the stakeholders it serves. Explore techniques and factors for selecting and planning audits based upon measurable factors of risk, materiality, public interest, and public benefit as valued by its many stakeholders. You will identify stakeholder interest and needs, future opportunities, and external threats; apply a cost-benefit approach using measures of outcome value to score proposals; and formulate compelling audit objectives leading to meaningful, specific, future-oriented recommendations of value.

## What you'll learn

- Apply strategic customer value in assessing desired stakeholder needs.
- Perform a SWOT analysis and logic model to consider audit topic objectives.
- Use internal and external risk assessment to identify areas of vulnerability and opportunity as criteria for scoring potential audit benefits and results.
- Apply a cost/benefit approach to score the potential value of audit proposals.
- Describe the central role of objectives in performance auditing.
- Write objectives that provide clear direction for planning fieldwork, assigning staff, facilitating report writing, and meeting auditing standards.
- Track audit progress and measure actual results.

## Curriculum

#### Module 1: Introduction

- Overview of performance audit phases
- Understanding the role and responsibilities of performance auditors
- Identifying key factors for audit success and failure

#### Module 2: Strategic Customer Value Analysis to Outcomes

- Analyzing stakeholder value and identifying end users
- Applying SWOT and Logic Model analyses for audit selection
- Setting strategic directions for meaningful audits

#### Module 3: Audit Selection Phase—Measuring Risk and Return

- Conducting internal and external risk assessments
- Identifying and scoring audit benefits versus costs
- Applying a structured method for prioritizing audits based on ROI

#### Module 4: Planning Phase—Formulating Audit Objectives

- Articulating clear and measurable audit objectives
- Identifying necessary data through precise sub-objectives
- Ensuring audit objectives align with intended outcomes and user needs

#### Module 5: Tracking Audit Progress and Performance Measurement

- Monitoring audit milestones and outcomes
- Using tools such as Gantt charts to visualize audit progress
- Evaluating audit effectiveness and measuring actual results

## Pricing

**Tuition:** $649