Auditors play a vital role in determining the true financial health scenario of different companies. Their primary role is to ensure the operations in your company comply with relevant regulations and internal control policies while identifying areas for improvement.
Even though organisations are using automation tools to perform tasks, most of them believe only 34% of tasks depend on tools, and the other 66% are performed by humans. This makes auditors focus on enhancing their hard and soft skills and reshape themselves with the present market requirement.
Our guide today shares 17 top skills that auditors must have in 2024.
Table of Content
What are auditor skills?
Auditor skills refer to an individual’s innate or acquired abilities to perform auditing tasks accurately.
An audit involves analysing a company’s finances and processes to ensure they comply with industry standards and regulations. It requires industry knowledge, analytical skills, interpersonal and communicative skills, and attention to detail to identify any false or discrepancies in the financial statements and produce correct audit reports.
Key takeaways
- Auditor skills are the inherent or acquired abilities of an individual to perform auditing tasks.
- Enhancing auditors’ hard and soft skills is essential to bridge the skill gap in the market.
- Communication and analytical skills are mostly necessary for auditors.
- Auditors must know how different businesses operate before performing an audit process.
17 top auditing skills you must have in 2024
According to a recent report, the UK has a talent shortage due to a skill mismatch between academic courses and market needs. To survive this challenge, auditors must acquire skills that suit the present client’s requirements. Listed below are some essential skills for auditors.
1. Communicative skills
Auditors must communicate with business clients and work with multiple departments to conduct the auditing process effectively. For that, they are required to have good communication skills that ensure they can communicate properly with clients, understand their perspectives, read financial statements, and create clear audit reports.
Note: Active listening during audit can improve communication.
2. Financial skills
These professionals must understand how to create an organised financial statement before they start the audit process. This helps them understand the company’s financial statements efficiently, including its revenue and expenses. With efficient financial skills, auditors can recognise discrepancies in your financial statements and find better solutions.
3. Analytical skills
Analytical skills help auditors to detect errors in financial statements faster. It helps quickly identify processes that require immediate attention and make recommendations for improvement. This skill enables an auditor to identify the root cause of a problem, recommend necessary actions, and evaluate the potential impact of discrepancies in a client’s financial statements.
4. Data analysis
Data plays an important role in an auditor’s decision-making process. They can uncover patterns and anomalies in clients’ financial data that indicate potential business issues. This requires auditors to understand the use of data analytics tools and techniques that can assist them in learning about company data, making better decisions, and enhancing auditing processes.
5. Risk assessment
Auditors, internal or external, must have risk assessment and management skills. This helps them evaluate operations, processes, and systems of an organisation, identify and assess potential risks and threats, and find better solutions to mitigate them. It also allows them to provide valuable suggestions to clients to improve their risk control measures and enhance overall company resilience.
6. Business acumen
Besides doing regular audit checks, auditors need to understand how different businesses work. They can do so by working closely with multiple companies, learning their workflow, and paying attention to new industry trends.
Understanding varied business models will help auditors fulfill their tasks better than following similar audit procedures everywhere.
7. Active listening and attention to detail
Auditing requires a meticulous eye for detail. Auditors must be able to spot even the smallest irregularities or inconsistencies in financial records that could significantly impact an organisation’s financial health and compliance. Auditors analyse vast amounts of data, looking for patterns, anomalies, or deviations from expected norms.
8. Proactive Problem solving
Auditors need proactive problem-solving skills to identify and address potential issues in a company early, find better solutions to improve its operations and financial health, minimise risks, and enhance overall performance.
9. Critical thinking and flexibility
Auditing regulations keep changing fast. Auditors must be flexible and change their audit plans when unexpected things happen in the market. Good auditors must make quick decisions and solve problems requiring critical thinking and creativity.
Auditors must think carefully about complicated problems, find things that don’t match up, and make smart choices. This is important for giving their opinions and suggestions after an audit.
10. Technical proficiency
Auditors need to learn to use different tools and technologies to streamline their auditing process, and eliminate the risk of manual errors. They must know the use of data analytics tool to efficiently understand data patterns and make better decisions.
11. Deadline adherence
Auditors are always bound by a specific time in which they need to finish the auditing process. So, it’s important to be good at managing tasks to meet deadlines. Different companies have their ways of working and other deadlines. A good auditor must adhere to deadlines to finish work on time without making mistakes.
12. Integrity and professional skepticism
Having integrity skills is a must for an auditor. This is because they need to work with sensitive company data. Maintaining confidentiality and avoiding biases will allow auditors to come to a fair scenario that won’t compromise audit outcomes.
13. Regulatory knowledge
Having regulatory knowledge is an essential skill for auditors. Only if they know the regulations can they analyse whether a business complies with them and make suggestions. However, regulatory requirements often change, and auditors must keep themselves updated about the current laws.
14. Continuous learning
Continuous learning is essential for auditors as audit requirements and laws often change. Additionally, the introduction of new technologies also requires auditors to learn them regularly. They face new challenges every day and require different ways to handle them. All this mandates continuous learning and development for auditors.
15. Teamwork
Auditors may often need to work in a team, especially when auditing a business, and they may collaborate with company staff. This requires them to have a collaborative mindset and a spirit of teamwork. They need to understand the functions and operations of different teams within their client company to efficiently collaborate and optimise workflow.
16. Organisation
An auditor must work with lots of data and details, so keeping everything organised is crucial. Good organisation skills help them find information faster and manage time effectively to meet strict deadlines.
17. Adaptability
There is constant regulations and business environment change, with newer risks and threats evolving daily. This requires auditors to be adaptive to such changes and efficiently perform auditing processes. It allows them to provide valuable insights and maintain the integrity of their work.
Final thoughts!
Auditors today need more than just accounting. They must analyse data and understand cybersecurity because financial systems are mostly digital. Knowing rules about data protection and using advanced software to find potential risks and fraud is necessary. Also, critical thinking and good communication are important for explaining audit results. If you are looking for a skilled auditor, try searching with Experlu!
