Services

Working with Internal Audit

Western’s Internal Audit team plays many roles: auditors, accountants, advisors, analysts, and administrators. In these capacities, we focus on supporting Western’s leaders in achieving their operational goals, while providing independent assurance to senior leadership and the Audit Committee that effective processes are in place to identify, manage, and report on significant risks to the University.

Our coverage extends University-wide, and we generally focus in the areas of operations, finance, information technology and security, behavior and culture, health and safety, project management, and compliance.

We do this by examining how things have been done in the past and using those insights to shape stronger and more resilient practices for the future. Our goal is to enhance efficiency, accountability, and confidence across Western and to redefine what it means to work with auditors.

Our Audit Process

The Internal Audit process begins with performing a university wide risk assessment to determine significant exposures of risk in achieving Western’s objectives. Based on this assessment, processes or departments affected by those risks are selected for review and incorporated into our Annual Audit Plan which is approved by the Audit Committee of the Board of Governors.

The Audit Team then works with Western’s units to plan and execute reviews, focusing on areas of governance, risk management, and internal control processes. We look to co-create the “why” the audit matters so that we examine the things that make a difference.

The following is a high-level summary of the different steps our department goes through during the audit process. Your participation during each one of the steps will help ensure that we are most effective in helping you to meet your goals and objectives.

1. Initial Meeting – Meeting between Internal Audit and department leaders to discuss the process, direction and scope of the audit.
2. Field Work – This will be performed by Internal Audit which involves taking time to understand your unit’s functions and activities.  This process also involves the testing and analysis of your unit’s activities.  The results are used as the source of input into the audit report.  Again it is an interactive process between Internal Audit and your unit’s staff.
3. Exit Meeting – Another meeting between unit leaders and Internal Audit to discuss the general results of the review.  Depending on the type of review, recommendations may be documented in an audit report and leaders will be asked to respond with a plan of action. 
4. Final Report – Based on the three previous steps, a final report will be completed summarizing the results of the review and may include recommendations and responses.  The report will be provided to key administrative members and a summary report is provided to the Audit Committee. 
5. Follow-up –To track the progress of implementing recommendations, a follow-up review may be scheduled.