The fraud triangle, authored by Dr. Cressey, has been adopted by the auditing profession as a tool to help detect and deter occupational fraud.
The model has many applications in the fraud audit. The primary purpose is in the planning stage to help identify where and why your organization would be vulnerable to someone committing a fraud risk scenario.
Here’s a closer look at the fraud triangle and how you can implement this model.
How you determine which concepts to evaluate to “consider fraud” and how to integrate fraud into your audit program is a challenge that is easily solved if you approach it with the scope and objectives of your audit clearly defined.
In order to fully appreciate how a traditional audit can differ from a fraud audit, it is necessary to grasp how the two types of audit are similar. Bridging the gap between the two can help you minimize the fraud risk for your company and better deploy the programs that are going to work within your organization. While the two audit types can produce vastly different results, they both have similar groundings and structure:
While auditors are often experts in accounting and auditing it is not reasonable to assume your team are also highly skilled experts in fraud auditing, forensic accounting, or even litigation when the time comes for further action. Many cases of fraud have the capability to go undetected for years if the proper controls are not in place, and so it is likely your team of auditors are not commonly dealing with fraud in their working lives beyond the creation of controls and preventative measures.
Let’s take a look at the advantages of using experts in fraud auditing and litigation to support your team while detecting and addressing matters of fraud.
