In a dynamic and increasingly regulated business environment, both financial and management accounting play a key role not only in reporting results but also in identifying potential operational, financial and fraud irregularities. Disturbing signals, referred to as red flags, often represent the first visible sign of risk requiring in-depth analysis – including in the context of investigative audit.
As part of our practice, we identify and analyse a set of distinctive indicators that may indicate mechanisms leading to:
- manipulation of financial results,
- concealing losses or excessive optimism in accounting estimates,
- creative accounting,
- miscalculation of costs and revenues over time,
- inflating assets or lowering liabilities,
- circumventing accounting rules to achieve specific management or market objectives,
- unjustified or non-transparent transfers of funds within or outside the organisation.
Typical red flags that may indicate the need for investigative audit include:
- significant and unexplained accounting corrections during the closing periods of the year,
- diverging financial and operational data (e.g. rising revenue while decreasing sales volumes),
- unusual transactions at the end of the reporting period (window dressing),
- the maintenance of unjustified accruals;
- high level of cash transactions or lack of transparency in financial flows,
- poor quality of source documentation or inconsistencies between accounting systems and management reporting,
- excessive turnover of the staff responsible for accounting and internal control,
- conflicts of interest in the decision-making structure or signals of pressure to achieve certain financial results,
- lack of access to full financial data in individual organisational units.
Role of investigative audit
The investigative audit, unlike the classical financial audit, focuses on identifying the causes, consequences and possible perpetrators of the detected irregularities. These activities combine elements of financial data analysis, investigative methods and investigative techniques – often using digital analysis tools (forensic data analysis) and methods of visualization of financial flows.
Using an interdisciplinary approach, the audit of the investigator allows not only to confirm or exclude fraud, but also to identify gaps in internal control systems that have allowed risk to arise.
Benefits to organisations:
- early identification of operational, financial and reputational risks,
- minimising losses by reacting quickly to irregularities,
- improving transparency and reliability of data reported to stakeholders,
- support in corrective actions and judicial processes (if fraud is confirmed),
- improving organisational maturity in corporate governance and governance