The primary role of an internal and external auditor will vary due to the underlying responsibilities of their respective functions. Despite these differences though, there is a certain degree of commonality due to fundamental objectives, such as ensuring the accuracy and integrity of information and business processes, being shared between them. An internal auditor performs a variety of reviews and assessments, providing the company board of directors with extremely important information about the operations of the business. This provides a greater level of independent and objective insight to the board, so they can see whether their directives are being achieved or not. An external auditor is typically responsible for providing an independent opinion on the integrity of a company’s financial statements, although they can be used to provide additional audit services. This can be achieved by a variety of means, but the preferred approach is to gain assurance over the company’s internal controls, rather than performing significant amounts of substantive tests on the data itself.
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