Work experience 680
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I was wondering if anyone could help who has been through SOX 404. We are in the process of hiring a consultant to guide us and looking to hire someone to do most the work internally, sort of like an internal auditor. I was wondering what kind of experience is needed to do the leg work since their work will be reviewed by the outside consultant. Do we need someone with audit experience or could we use someone with very little public experience but a lot of private?
Thanks for the help.
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In reference to your question, one of the vital skill sets that this person should bring to you is acutal audit work experience. There are those in the job market that have the neccessary financial and technology background to fill your spot. But those resources are in GREAT DEMAND…
If you’re lucky to find such a person, have them interviewed by your own internal audit and technology manager. You will find during this process who has the skills and who has just read the latest information from a website.
If you wish to chat more about this, let me know.
Jeff
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You need a team on the top that have got the audit knowledge.
My expeirence is that if you, by legwork, mean doing the documentation, it is not necessary, but the person should have a good knowledge of the processes.
Guess it all comes down to the size of the company. If the process can be done by 2-3 people, go for audit knowledge. If you need a team of 10-15, not everyone needs that knowledge as long as they have the right abilities in other area.
(I should know - I got my BSc in Information Systems last year)
I’m available to share more experience if you want to.
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Be wary of your selection of both internal and external consultants. Please see below for a snippet of good guidance I found on the web…
‘Perhaps in a few years, when people have worked out what is actually required, and indeed when a few test cases have set the boundaries, then we’ll understand the issues fairly well . Until then it seems to be very much a case of the visually impaired leading the totally blind (and charging a lot of money to do so).’
richsam
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It sounds like you are commencing your project - sounds like you are not US based?
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I was wondering if anyone could help who has been through SOX 404. We are in the process of hiring a consultant to guide us and looking to hire someone to do most the work internally, sort of like an internal auditor. I was wondering what kind of experience is needed to do the leg work since their work will be reviewed by the outside consultant. Do we need someone with audit experience or could we use someone with very little public experience but a lot of private?
My personal experience from two SOX projects performed successfully as a consultant is the following:
a lot of people claim to know, how SOX compliance can exactly be achieved. Some of them seem to have obtained there knowledge by only reading internet information. The truth as far as I have experienced it, is: so far there is no one way to achieve compliance. Ask different companies from the BIG-4 and you will get different answers. In fact, you will most likely get different answers if you ask different subsidaries of anyone of the Big-4. That is especially true for the point of view that American external auditors have compared to the standpoint of European external auditors.
There are basic ways that have proven to be useful: process description in narrative and flowcharts, ensuring that controls listed in the RCMs can be included in existing process documentation as well as policies to check consistency etc.
Beside that I highly recommend to get in touch with your external auditor as early as possible within your project.
Regarding the selection of an internal consultant or permanent employee I would simply recommend that you ask for references of former clients and for examples of his or her work respectively.
Good luck with your SOX project.