Techniques of Gathering Audit Evidence

Second part of auditing techniques from article of Ookeditse Kamau, Listing down the techniques of gathering audit evidence :

Interviews
This is an interactive process of gathering data by asking the IS personnel open and closed question.

Questionnaire
Gathering data by allowing IS personnel to answer predetermined question. The answer then corroborated through additional testing.

Benchmarking.
This comparing the performance of the auditee with the similar organization or well accepted standard in industry.

Data Interogation
Downloading data and tested, i.e. Journal testing, application input, and output integrity check, gaps on invoices/purchase order and summarization of vendors.

Extraction System Parameter
Reviewing system configuration and user account details through the utility tools script.

Nevertheless one must be aware that audit evidence should represent the predetermined objective in an audit. A good evidence allow itself to be linked to a particular objective and derive a conclusion.

Source : Kamau, Ookeditse, Audit Evidence Refresher, ISACA Jounal Volume 3,2012