If you were an external auditor, what's the first thing you'd ask for when entering an audit?

"I'd negotiate a scope contract to outline what the teams would be looking at and what would be considered non-essential. We'd review SOX compliance on various fronts from Finance to IT technology to HR. All these different areas have aspects that must be audited or at least reviewed. Then I'd take that back to my company and we'd assemble a team who knew exactly what they were looking for before beginning the audit."

This question is to test your knowledge of the proper steps to take at the very beginning of a project. There are a few different answers that all lead to the same thing. You need to know the scope of the audit. You need to see exactly what you're looking at. It's highly unlikely that you'll be auditing an entire company yourself as most publicly traded companies are far too large for one person to handle.

You'll want to have a scoping meeting to decide what everyone will be looking at or if the contract hasn't been arranged, a contract meeting.

"I'd want the scope documentation to ensure that we're only looking at what's in scope for this audit. If that isn't prepared and this is the initial client visit, I'd ask for a contract meeting to review all the areas of the company to determine what needs to be audited and what would be white noise."