CONTROL SELF-ASSESSMENT: A Principles Based Integrated Assurance Framework: James Brady Vorhies CIA, CISA, CPA

by James Brady Vorhies

Over 10 years ago, I published my first book on control self-assessment. This is my second. However, it would have been my second, third and fourth – if I had published it traditionally. I had an offer to publish this book as a three book set. But, the price of these books would have been prohibitive to have the effect I wanted. I have always been a great believer in the power of control self-assessment, and I want to share my knowledge with everyone. So, now you know why I gave up an opportunity, as my wife likes to remind me, “to make a lot of money” – to self-publish this book in electronic format for “almost free”. Almost free compared to how much it would have cost. My objective in writing this book wasn’t to make the publisher a lot of money. It was to develop a resource that is readily available and affordable. To develop a resource 1. Can be used by professionals to help answer almost any controls compliance question. 2. Covers every important compliance topic so that students can use this book in order to obtain a complete control self- assessment and compliance education. 3. Provides an affordable resource that professors can use to cover select compliance topics. However, as a great proponent of control self-assessment, this second book is really about how to develop a world-class control self-assessment process. As I will explain throughout this book, I believe that what one needs to develop is actually a “key control self-assessment based quality assurance and risk monitoring process”. This is how management can best obtain ongoing assurance over all of their operational, reporting and compliance risks. While a control self-assessment process can be one of the most important components of a company’s system of internal control. It is only a component, and one has to understand the entire internal and external control frameworks to understand how to make a control self-assessment process operate most effectively within these frameworks. Therefore, while this book is really about how to develop a world class control self-assessment process, or a “key control self-assessment based quality assurance and risk monitoring process”, this book covers just about everything else you need to understand related to the systems of internal and external control. It explains all of the important components of a principles based integrated assurance framework and how one should design and operate such a framework. But, as I will explain the most important component of this framework is the control self-assessment process. Internal control is never a one size fits all approach. But, instead it must be scalable and adaptable to fit the specific requirements of each company. And to understand how to design and create the best internal control process, one must understand all of the components of this system, and the legal and regulatory requirements of the system of external control. Therefore, this book was developed to cover all of these topics.

864 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 1, 2015