Topic 8: Determine Engagement Procedures

Engagement procedures are drafted to ensure successful attainment of engagement objectives, Engagement procedures must be relevant to the selected objectives. A procedure may be applicable to the internal audit as a whole, but if it is erroneously applied to an objective, the result will be irrelevant.

Audit evidence refers to facts used to support audit opinions, conclusions and recommendations which can be physical (pictures), documentary (letters, memo), representational (testimonials) or analytical (graph comparison).

Types of legal evidence includes:

• Best evidence - also referred as primary evidence and is generally documentary
• Secondary evidence - is inferior primary evidence. Oral testimony and written summaries. 
• Direct evidence - a fact without requiring presumptions or interference. E.g eyewitness
• Conclusive evidence - leads to only one conclusions.
• Circumstantial evidence - proves an intermediate fact from which a primary fact can be logically inferred. 
• Corroborative evidence - supplements evidence already given and tends to support it.

The internal auditor should always bear in mind the mandatory injunction in the Code of Ethics honor the confidentiality requirements of the owner of audited data.