Research & Evidence-Based Practice Flashcards
7 cards from real Certified Internal Auditor practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Research & Evidence-Based Practice flashcards as text
When evaluating the sufficiency of audit evidence, an auditor should consider:
Answer: The quantity of evidence needed to support each audit conclusion
Sufficiency refers to the quantity of evidence needed; IIA Standards require that evidence be sufficient, meaning enough to support the auditor's conclusions.
A root cause analysis tool that visually maps contributing causes into categories such as people, process, and technology is known as a:
Answer: Fishbone (Ishikawa) diagram
The fishbone (Ishikawa or cause-and-effect) diagram organizes potential root causes into categories to help auditors identify the underlying source of a problem.
An auditor conducting evidence-based practice must document working papers that are PRIMARILY intended to:
Answer: Support the audit conclusions and enable review and quality assurance
Working papers must support conclusions reached and allow supervisors and quality reviewers to assess whether evidence is sufficient and appropriate.
Which approach is MOST aligned with evidence-based practice when an auditor disagrees with management's risk assessment?
Answer: Document the disagreement and support the auditor's position with objective evidence
Evidence-based practice requires that audit conclusions be supported by objective evidence; disagreements with management should be documented with supporting evidence.
In a qualitative audit study, 'saturation' refers to the point at which:
Answer: Additional data collection no longer produces new themes or insights
Data saturation in qualitative research occurs when additional data gathering yields no new themes, indicating sufficient depth of understanding has been achieved.
Which of the following scenarios represents an inappropriate use of research evidence in internal auditing?
Answer: Selecting only studies that confirm a predetermined audit conclusion
Selectively citing only evidence that supports a pre-existing conclusion is confirmation bias and violates the objectivity principles of evidence-based practice.
An auditor uses process mining software to analyze event logs from an ERP system. The PRIMARY research advantage of this approach is:
Answer: It provides an objective, data-driven reconstruction of actual process flows
Process mining reconstructs actual process flows from system event logs, providing objective evidence of how processes were executed versus how they were designed.