We are experiencing a challenge in very busy areas of our business whereby management is not actioning the points agreed in the audit reports, despite mutual agreement being reached prior to the reports being issued.

To manage this non-action, we are considering introducing the following, either in isolation or a culmination of:

1. A requirement for senior management to formally respond to the audit report within 3 months highlighting the status of management corrective actions.
2. Recommending that senior/line management annual performance reviews include "Response to Internal Audit Reports" as a KPA.
3. Recommending that senior/line management be invited to audit committee meetings to personally explain any recurring non-action.

I would appreciate any thoughts on these ideas as well as what other internal audit functions are doing to manage a similar challenge.

Thanks

Johan
Mobile: +27 82 575 7111
Office: +27 11 239 6713
Fax: +27 11 239 6227

I Understand (and experienced) your point.

In my experience, "to force" or press Senior management to explain "why not..." in an Audit committe could be harsh and have a negative reaction by the management. Any improvement or action agreed should be considered a real need for the management himself!

In our audit Dept we expericed good result introducing periodically monitoring about the action plan just asking sistematically to the auditee an update on the action "completed/or not" and writing it in a very short report sent to the top management periodically.... (it's not an authentic follow up because you dont really see and test what they have said, but you may do this later and they know it).

Many senior Managers like to show to the Top Management / audit committee that they really perform what they have said....
In many cases this practice has worked out!!!