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Principles
Audit criteria are required to assess existing conditions and produce audit findings (‘what is’ compared to ‘what should be’). Audit criteria should be devised from recognised sources, and be objective, relevant, reasonable and attainable. By being as objective as possible room for subjective interpretation should be minimised.
Instructions
Choose suitable criteria
As the general concepts of economy, efficiency and effectiveness need to be interpreted in relation to the subject matter, audit criteria will vary from one performance audit to another, and the choice is normally relatively open and formulated by the audit team.
Sources of audit criteria determine the effort needed to assure their suitability:
- criteria based on legislation, regulations or recognised professional standards are among the most uncontroversial. Generally accepted criteria can also be obtained from sources such as professional associations, recognised bodies of experts and academic literature;
- the other main sources of criteria for performance audits are the standards, measures and results commitments adopted by auditee management, including specific targets or requirements set by the Commission in the context of activity-based management;
- if criteria are not available from the above sources, the audit team can focus on performance achieved in comparable organisations, best practices determined through benchmarking or consultation, or standards developed by the audit team through an analysis of activities.
Where the entity has adopted meaningful and specific measures for assessing its own performance, those relevant to the audit should be reviewed to ensure that they are reasonable and complete.
Discuss with the auditee
Where criteria are not self-evident and are open to dispute by auditee management, they should be agreed insofar as possible in terms of their relevance and acceptability. This approach recognises that the audit is not simply searching for deficiencies to report. If suitable criteria cannot be determined and agreed, the detailed audit question may need to be reconsidered. In the event that disagreement persists, the audit report needs to explain the criteria used. Under no circumstances can an audit be carried out using criteria that could lead to biased or misleading audit results.
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