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Quality Assurance

The UNC-CH Office of  Internal Audit (Office) continually seeks to maintain and improve the quality of its services and its conformance with the International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing (Standards).  Our quality assurance and improvement program (QAIP) includes three elements:

  • Ongoing monitoring;
  • Internal assessment; and
  • External assessment.

Ongoing Monitoring

As its name implies, our ongoing monitoring activities include routine activities such as review of working papers and other work products, day-to-day supervision and discussion with staff members; and bi-weekly one-on-one status meetings between the Chief Audit Officer and each staff member.

The Office also has routine staff meetings to discuss:

  • The status of individual projects and any note-worthy findings or audit techniques used;
  • Brainstorming for projects, particularly those in the planning phase;
  • Changes at the University;
  • New and revised department practices and auditing tools/techniques; and
  • Status of the audit plan.

The Office’s Internal Audit Manual (Manual) is extensive and is available electronically on SharePoint and a shared server drive.  The Chief Audit Officer reviews the Manual at least once a year to determine policies/procedures that need to be revised or added.  Any changes needed are made when they are identified.

Internal Assessment

Periodically, the Office of  Internal Audit will conduct self-assessments using resources and techniques found in the Institute of Internal Auditors’ (IIA) Quality Assessment Manual. The review will focus on evaluating the level of conformance with the Standards and the IIA’s Code of Ethics.

We will do a full self-assessment at least once between external quality assessment reviews. Due to the small size of the UNC-CH Office of Internal Audit, full internal assessments done annually are likely not the best use of limited resources. The full assessment will follow the IIA Quality Assessment Manual. Preferably, the full internal assessment should be done the year before an external QAR as the information could be used as the basis for a self-assessment with interdependent validation.

At the end of each internal assessment, the Chief Audit Officer will issue a report summarizing the results of the assessment and providing an opinion on the Offie’s level of conformity with the Standards and, if necessary, corrective action plans.

External Assessment

External assessments will be conducted at least once every five years. These reviews may be done as a full external assessment or a self-assessment with independent external validation. They will be done by a qualified, independent assessor or assessment team from outside UNC-CH.

External assessors must have demonstrated competence in the professional practice of internal auditing and the external assessment process.  They must be independent and have neither an actual nor a perceived conflict of interest with the Department or be under the influence of the University.

The Chief Audit Officer will communicate information about each external assessment to senior management and the Finance, Infrastructure, and Audit Committee. These communications will, at a minimum, include information about the:

  • Reason for an external assessment and its scope and nature;
  • Qualifications and independence of the assessor(s) or assessment team, including potential conflicts of interest;
  • Conclusions of the assessors and recommendations for corrective action or process improvements; and
  • If necessary, corrective action plans.

The external assessors will be expected to issue a written report at the end of the assessment engagement. This report and the Office’s responses will be distributed in keeping with normal report distribution processes:

  • Chancellor
  • Chief of Staff
  • UNC-CH Board of Trustee members
  • UNC General Administration
  • Council of Internal Audit