3 quick ways to boost audit quality

By Natalya Yashina, CPA, DASM

We’ve all been focusing on audit quality for a long time. The accounting profession, including both public accounting firms and private industry, is evolving rapidly and we’re keeping up with the changes as best as we can. Regulatory bodies publish new pronouncements every year that need to be assessed, sliced and diced and, in many cases, implemented. Sometimes it may take a little while to completely catch up and fully grasp the new requirements and standards.

The 2020 Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) inspection reports for the largest six accounting firms demonstrated a significant improvement in audit quality from 2019 — largely driven by PwC’s results.1 PwC successfully reduced the number of deficient engagements from 30% in 2019 to just 2% in 2020. This was great news and shows incredible focus.

However, auditors continue to be challenged by specific audit areas, like revenue for example. Audit quality is paramount to the accounting profession. So what can we do on a daily basis, in addition to focusing on training, to help increase audit quality? Audit teams can free up time and focus on the quality of their work by adopting some key project management tools that can work for them.

1. 10-minute stand-ups

When implemented correctly, 10-minute daily stand-up meetings really work. They really are stand-ups, whether you hold them in person or virtually. When we sit down for a meeting, our bodies are prepared to be there for a while. Standing up motivates us to keep the meeting short. During a stand-up meeting, each team member has to answer just three, and only three questions:

• What did you do yesterday?
• What will you do today?
• What’s blocking your progress?

It’s important to NOT try to solve any impediments that are voiced during the meeting. You schedule a separate meeting with that team member who noted that something was blocking their progress. This will allow the rest of the team to go back to their work without having to spend valuable time listening to an issue and resolution that do not pertain to them or their work.

When implemented effectively, stand-ups can be an excellent solution to reduce the number and perhaps the length of an internal status meeting. They’re a great way to get a brief overview and status of an entire project without diving into details.

2. Kanban boards

Until recently, if you wanted to get into Imperial Gardens in Tokyo, Japan, you needed to get a card and upon your exit, return that card. These cards were free but if there were no cards available, you had to wait until one became available. The cards were a brilliant and low-cost way of limiting the number of people that could be in the gardens at one time, and it’s the same idea behind a Kanban board.

The word “Kanban” is roughly translated to “card you can see” or a “signboard.” In the 1950s, Toyota introduced the use of Kanban to standardize the flow of parts in the just-in-time (JIT) production lines.

Kanban is a method to manage and improve work across human systems. It helps with visualization, efficiency maximization, and continuous improvement. While it’s mainly used in software development today, it also can be used in a professional services industry.

Here is how it can be implemented on an audit engagement:

Instead of keeping a long “to-do” list on your audit engagement, group the engagement’s tasks into columns on a board under the headings: To Do, Doing, and Done. This can be a virtual or a physical board. Since audit engagements are complex, I recommend using separate Kanban boards for areas of planning, controls design, implementation, and/or operating effectiveness test work, substantive test work, and wrap-up. This approach will allow the team to manage each area more effectively and provide a better visual of each area’s status.

3. Continuous improvement or Kaizen loops

A Kaizen loop is a strategy in which a team experiments with a small change (like a 10-minute stand-up, for example) and adopts the change if it works or rejects the change if it doesn’t. Essentially, it’s a “Plan, Do, Check and Act” loop. Failing fast is a concept behind Kaizen loops. And it’s not a bad thing — quite the opposite. The faster you fail at something, the faster you’ll be able to identify what works the best for your team or even to complete a task correctly.

To be successful at using Kaizen loops, you need to limit your batch sizes. For example, if you decide to implement Kanban boards on your engagement, implement one board for planning. If it works, great — you can adopt the method for the rest of the engagement. If it doesn’t, move on and find what works better for your team.

Limiting batch size is also applicable to the audit review process. It’s better to send a smaller batch in for the manager’s or partner’s review and receive their feedback and comments quickly rather than wait until you have a larger batch. If test work didn’t address risks identified during the planning stage, it’s better to learn about it earlier to remediate the situation faster.

A new way of working

Introducing a new way for working to your teams can be challenging. Some embrace the change, while others may find it stressful and resent it. Effective management of your and your team’s emotions during this time will help achieve a positive outcome. Helping our teams to embrace change starts way before introducing the change. It begins with:

• Earning your teams trust by being honest and reliable.
• Being an active listener
• Collaborating with your team by sharing information.
• Giving your team the freedom to be awesome.

We also want to empower our teams to choose their best ways of working and encourage what works for them so they can deliver the highest quality results and seek continuous improvement.

Implementing project management tools that work for your team can help your audit engagement run smoother and improve processes and procedures — ultimately freeing up time to focus on improving audit quality.

Natalya Yashina, CPA, DASM, is the founder and CEO of Capital Accounting Advisory, LLC, where she provides training services, project management, and technical accounting solutions. She was the 2020–2021 chair of the VSCPA Accounting & Auditing Advisory Committee, which she has served on since 2018.

1.  Firm Inspection Reports, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. https://pcaobus.org/oversight/inspections/firm-inspection-reports

Other resources

• “Guided Continuous Improvement (GCI): Speeding Up the Agile Kaizen Loop”: pmi.org/disciplined-agile/gci
• “Designing the Kanban Board”: pmi.org/disciplined-agile/designing-the-kanban-board