An approach to learning risk-based auditing

This paper presents a discussion of a risk-based auditing project that can be used in an undergraduate or graduate auditing course. The project gives students an opportunity to apply the concepts learned in their auditing class about risk-based auditing to a real world company. A number of companies are selected from a particular industry. Each student team is assigned a company and performs business risk analysis related to the entity and its environment using a structured questionnaire (template). The students are required to perform analytical procedures (ratio analysis) on the company and compare it to industry data or a competitor. Student evaluations of the project indicate that it helped them apply their audit knowledge, and was relevant to the auditing class.