An audit findings presentation should make four things clear: the requirement, the evidence of a gap, why that gap matters, and the response being proposed. Lead with the findings that need attention, but keep their scope visible. A missing record, an unapproved transaction, and a proven loss are different conclusions. If the review concerns website or help content rather than purchasing controls, use a content audit presentation to discuss proposals to keep, update, merge, retire or investigate assets; these editorial choices are not audit severity ratings.
Once the findings and management responses have been reviewed, you can use Presenti to organize the audit brief into a slide draft. Keep the evidence references and unresolved questions in the input; they should not disappear when the report becomes shorter.
Open with a finding the evidence can support
Compare these two opening headlines:
- “Purchasing controls failed in 20% of transactions.”
- “Approval evidence was unavailable for 8 of 40 records selected for review.”
The first claims a failure across a population. The second identifies what was observed in the reviewed records. Unless the work supports the broader claim, the narrower headline is the useful one.
The IIA’s guidance on communicating final engagement results covers written reports and presentations for stakeholders. A presentation needs to be understandable without becoming a different account of the findings. Use the reviewed report as the source, not a prompt asking AI to discover the audit conclusion.
For an opening slide, include the review scope, the most important finding, the management response, and the question for the meeting. If the response is still proposed, label it that way. Leave the supporting record detail available in an appendix or the approved report.
A worked example: missing purchasing records
Consider a fictional review of purchasing requests in one department from January 1 to March 31. Its internal procedure requires evidence of the designated approval before an order is placed. The reviewer deliberately selects 40 records for inspection; this is not a random sample. These invented inputs illustrate how to communicate a finding, not how to conduct an audit or assign a professional rating.
| Observation at the review cutoff | Records | What the slide can say |
|---|---|---|
| Required approval evidence was not located | 8 of 40 | The selected records contain an approval-evidence gap. |
| Supplier-review evidence was not located | 5 of 40 | A separate record requirement also has gaps. |
| Both types of evidence were missing | 3 of 40 | The two findings overlap; the counts cannot simply be added. |
| At least one of these two gaps | 10 of 40 | 8 + 5 − 3 = 10 distinct records in the selected set. |
The approval-evidence gap is 8 ÷ 40 = 20% of the selected records. Either type of gap appears in 10 ÷ 40 = 25%. These are descriptions of this deliberately selected set, not estimates of the department’s overall exception rate.
A slide saying “13 noncompliant transactions” would double-count three records and replace missing evidence with an unproven conclusion. Likewise, “25% of all purchases are defective” would extend the finding beyond the selection method. Retain the words “selected records” beside the figures. If the finding concerns the dataset itself, a data quality report presentation can separate completeness, format, duplication, and freshness checks while stating each denominator and distinguishing issue counts from affected records.
Two of the eight approval records are subsequently supplied. Keep that development separate from the original cutoff: eight gaps were observed, evidence has since been supplied for two, and six remain unresolved. Do not silently change the original count to six and make the presentation disagree with the reviewed report.
Reconcile the follow-up by record, not by files received
Two approval files arriving does not necessarily mean that two purchasing records are now free of both gaps. Some of the original records lacked supplier-review evidence as well. Before putting a smaller total on the next slide, identify which records the files belong to and record the reviewer’s disposition. Receipt alone is not the same as accepting the evidence against the requirement.
To see the arithmetic, label the eight original approval-gap records A1–A8. Let A1, A2 and A3 also have the supplier-review gap; two further records, S1 and S2, have only that gap. These are illustrative references for the original 8 + 5 − 3 = 10 records, not additional transactions. For the comparison below, assume the two supplied files have been reviewed and clear their approval-evidence gaps, while all five supplier-review gaps remain.
| Approval gaps cleared | Records still in both groups | Distinct records with either gap |
|---|---|---|
| A4 and A5: neither had a supplier-review gap | 3 | 6 + 5 − 3 = 8 |
| A1 and A4: one also had a supplier-review gap | 2 | 6 + 5 − 2 = 9 |
| A1 and A2: both also had supplier-review gaps | 1 | 6 + 5 − 1 = 10 |
All three cases leave six approval gaps, yet the combined unresolved population is different. In the last case, useful evidence has arrived but neither record is clear of both issues. A slide saying “affected records fell from ten to eight” would be justified only by the first case, not by the fact that two files were supplied.
Keep a follow-up row for each affected record with its original approval and supplier-review flags, the later evidence reference and receipt date, the reviewer’s decision, and the two current flags. Count current affected records once if either flag remains open. Keep the original cutoff columns unchanged; a later receipt must not rewrite what was available at the original review.
Until the record identities and review outcomes are known, the defensible message remains: “Ten selected records had at least one gap at the cutoff. Approval documents have since been supplied for two records and still need reconciliation and review; for six, no approval evidence has yet been supplied. The combined current total depends on the record-level review.” The table shows why that extra reconciliation matters; it does not assert which of the three cases occurred. Nor does clearing a record-level documentation gap establish that a proposed process change works or that the finding has met the organization’s closure requirements.
Build each finding around the requirement and the gap
One finding slide can carry the argument without carrying the entire working paper. Use a short headline and four labeled blocks:
- Requirement. Name the actual policy or agreed criterion and its relevant version. In this example, it is the internal requirement to retain approval evidence before ordering.
- Observation. State the eight missing records, the selected set of 40, the period, and the review cutoff.
- Consequence. Explain that the team cannot trace the required approval from the available records. Describe potential exposure separately from an observed loss.
- Response. Show the proposed corrective work, its status, and what would need to be checked afterwards.
Do not force a root cause into the fourth corner of a template. “Staff ignored the procedure” is not established by a missing attachment. The evidence might reflect a filing issue, an unclear workflow, an approval that occurred elsewhere, or an approval that never happened. Those possibilities require different follow-up. If refresher training is proposed as the response, first distinguish a skill gap from a workflow problem; another course will not repair a form that gives staff no place to record the required information.
If the team suspects that the request form allows submission without an attachment, identify that as a hypothesis and specify the review needed. Do not present a plausible mechanism as an agreed cause merely because it makes a cleaner story.
Prioritize the discussion without inventing a rating
The largest count is not automatically the most serious finding. A frequent documentation gap and a single high-consequence exposure may deserve different attention. Use the organization’s reviewed assessment and explain the reason for priority in ordinary language.
In this example, there is no approved severity rating and no verified loss calculation. The deck should not add a red “critical” badge or attach a monetary value. It can explain which records remain unresolved and ask the responsible reviewer to confirm the assessment.
Where a rating does exist, give its meaning and basis. Do not replace the approved scale with a designer’s red, amber, and green scheme. Color may reinforce a label; it should not introduce a new judgment.
A compact findings overview can show the finding reference, the observed gap, the reviewed priority, the response status, and the matter needing attention. Leave personal information and sensitive transaction details in the appropriately restricted source record.
Keep the action and its verification separate
“Add a mandatory approval attachment” describes a proposed workflow change. It does not show that the change is in use, that the right person approves, or that the six unresolved records have been resolved.
| Work proposed | Evidence to review later | Status to retain now |
|---|---|---|
| Resolve the six outstanding approval-evidence gaps | Record-by-record evidence and the reviewer’s disposition | Open; not replaced by the form change |
| Change the intake workflow to require the appropriate evidence | Approved configuration or procedure and evidence of implementation | Proposed until management accepts it |
| Check records created after implementation | A defined follow-up review, its results, and any remaining exceptions | Not yet performed |
Give each accepted action an accountable owner and agreed date. Do not invent either to complete a table. If management proposes a different response or disputes a finding, preserve that position and the unresolved question rather than rewriting the slide as agreement.
Use the closure status required by the organization’s process. Implementation and successful follow-up are not interchangeable; a completed configuration ticket alone should not become “finding closed” without the required review.
A six-slide audit findings outline
- What needs attention. Summarize the important finding and the response or decision being requested.
- What was reviewed. Show the period, department, criteria, selection method, exclusions, and cutoff.
- What the records establish. Explain the approval and supplier-review gaps, including their overlap.
- Why the finding matters. Separate the observed traceability issue, potential consequences, and unresolved cause.
- How management proposes to respond. Show the original gaps, process change, ownership, dates, and status separately.
- What happens next. Record the actual response and the evidence needed for follow-up; leave unagreed items open.
Use supporting pages for record references, the detailed methodology, the approved rating rationale, and full management responses. A short deck can still provide a route back to the evidence.
Draft from reviewed notes, not a topic alone
Before putting the brief into Presenti, remove restricted details that are not approved for that use. Include the scope and the findings rather than a topic such as “purchasing audit,” which leaves the substance unspecified. This brief keeps the fictional example’s distinctions intact:
Create a six-slide audit findings presentation from this fictional record. One department, January 1–March 31, 40 deliberately selected purchasing records, not a random sample. Approval evidence was unavailable for 8 records at the cutoff; supplier-review evidence was unavailable for 5; 3 overlap, so 10 distinct records have at least one gap. Two approval records were later supplied; six approval gaps remain unresolved. Missing evidence does not establish absence of approval, fraud, or loss. The cause and severity rating are unconfirmed. Separate resolving existing gaps, proposing a workflow change, and performing a future follow-up review. Preserve proposed versus agreed status. Do not invent owners, dates, ratings, losses, or completed actions.
Review the outline against the report before choosing a visual style. Pay particular attention to the words that alter the conclusion: “missing evidence” becoming “unauthorized,” “selected records” becoming “all purchases,” or “proposed” becoming “completed.” The presentation’s job is to make the finding easier to discuss without making it more certain than the evidence.
