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Title: Critical Thinking Skills for Auditors
Class Date: March 11, 2010
Time: 8:30am - 4:30pm
Instructor: Mary Beth Saenz
Location: One Highland Center, 314 E. Highland Mall Blvd., Suite 403, Austin, TX 78752
Price: $225
Early Bird Discount: $199 if you register by February 11, 2010.
Who should attend: This course is designed for audit professionals interested in assessing auditee written and oral responses to audit requests/questions as well as in identifying opportunities to enhance the effectiveness of auditor spoken and written communication. Audit professionals seeking a new perspective on assessing performance outcomes rather than simply outputs will find some new tools to apply in the course of current audits.
Course Description:
Is your audit office really ready to address the issue of assessing program results and effectiveness? ARRA funds require programs to report on job creation or retention - how do we “prove” jobs retained? This course takes the basic concepts of critical and analytical thinking and applies them to the standard audit fieldwork environment, especially as applies to performance audits. The class is predominantly exercise/activity driven as participants practice applying tools, techniques, and concepts covered in the course. Emphasis is placed on assessing the logic in auditee written and oral responses to audit requests/questions and on the logic process of drawing appropriate conclusions from existing data.
Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:
Understand and apply the basic steps in analyzing information
Identify common fallacies in reasoning - their own and others’
Define the primary intellectual standards that are used to evaluate reasoning
Ask appropriate/essential questions when assessing problems, information, assumptions, inferences, concepts, points of view, and consequences
Basic Course Outline:
I. Overview of Critical/Analytic Thinking
A. The Elements of Thinking
o How your brain works
o Logic - History and Basics
B. Criteria for Clear Thinking
o Clarity
o Accuracy
o Relevance
o Precision
o Logic
o Significance
C. Common Fallacies
o Formal fallacies
o Informal fallacies
II. Applying Critical/Analytic Thinking Tools & Techniques
o To plan an audit
o To written documentation
o In audit interviews
o To assess audit evidence
o To draw audit conclusions
o To review your own working paper documentation
o To evaluate program results (outcomes)
Instructor Bio: Mary Beth Saenz
Mary Beth Saenz has more than 11 years of audit experience, performing external audits (for a public accounting firm), internal audits (as a senior auditor for The University of Texas System Administration), and public/governmental audits (both as a senior auditor for the Texas State Auditor’s Office and as a fiscal reviewer for a federal grant review team). For the past 6 years, she has focused on opportunities in curriculum development and delivery throughout the states and US island territories in the subject areas of audit, oral and written communication, critical thinking skills, and grants management. Most recently, she developed a three part grants management curriculum that is currently being offered through the USDA Graduate School, with the certificate of completion for the series being accepted by several federal agencies as meeting requirements for grants management certification.
Mary Beth earned her BBA in Accounting from the University of Texas at Tyler in 1996. She also earned her designation as a CPA in 1998, and as a CIA in 2001.
CPE: 8 hours
Level: All
Type of class: Audit
Class participants will be billed after the class. Payment should be made to SOLUTIONS TRAINING GROUP,
Federal Tax ID: 20-2732184 and mailed to 2701 Maria Anna Rd, Austin, TX 78703.
If you have any questions, please contact Shannon Bieberdorf at (512) 914-5557
shannon-solutions@austin.rr.com.
Cancellation Information:
Cancellation Date: February 18, 2010
To cancel your registration from this course, please call or email the course
contact listed below. If a cancellation is received after the cancellation
date, the registrant will be charged $75 for course materials.
For additional information
about this class, please contact Laurie Garrant at laurie@solutionstraining.com,
(512) 914-5567.
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