Editing Audit Reports for Readability

September 2003

Once you have determined that the audit report is well organized, the next thing you focus on is readability issues. Check the report for the following attributes:

• Is it KIBBLE-Y?
  
  Here I think of dog kibble. Make your writing like little digestible chunks of information. Do not overwhelm your reader with long fat paragraphs that stretch from side to side on the page! Scary. Make your writing scan-able and easy to digest.
  
  
  • Is the entire report as brief as possible?
  • Are the sentences short?
    How would a bureaucrat say, “The dog is black?” “The canine persuasion creature appears to be of a darker hue than the feline persuasion creature living in the same abode.” Cut it out! Say what you mean, quickly!
• Are the paragraphs short?
  I have it on good authority, from an English professor at the University of Texas, that one-sentence paragraphs are OK. They are scan-able and easy to read. Forget high-school grammar on this one!
• Are line lengths short?
  If your text wraps from side to side on a page, it is much less readable or scannable, than text in columns or having white space that allows you to scan to find what you need.
  
  
• Did you avoid referring to yourself?
  Some audit reports start with “We conducted our audit…”. “We found…” , “Aren’t we just wonderful?” We, we, we! Instead of referring to yourself, get to the point! The focus should be on the content of the report and on the reader, not on ourselves and all the hard work we did. Obviously we were there. Obviously we did an audit. Try to eliminate any reference to yourself. You may be able to cut out several sentences per finding and whole paragraphs out of your report.
  
  
• Are acronyms eliminated?
  Acronyms are created because someone doesn’t want to make the effort to say or write the whole thing. One cure is to just write the whole thing out each time. Another cure is to substitute a sniglet of words in place of the whole thing.

  Examples:
  The University of Texas at Austin (the University)
  Uniform Statewide Accounting System (Accounting System)

• Is inflammatory or loaded language eliminated?
  The words “poor”, “weak”, “inadequate”, “failed”, etc. should be avoided. These are judgments and can add an inflammatory tone to your report. How do you like being called a poor, weak, inadequate failure? Didn’t think you did!
  
  This is how to get rid of them.
  
  Example:

Controls over cash disbursements are weak. Cash is not reconciled on a monthly basis.

FIX:

Cash is not reconciled on a monthly basis.

Just get to the point and skip the judgment. You don’t need the first sentence. It doesn’t convey much anyway. And that leads me to my next point.

• Are the words “internal control” or “controls” avoided?
  Usually, when I see these words used, I know that the auditor is skirting the real issue or just not saying what is so. Instead of saying controls are weak… get more concrete and describe exactly what is wrong. This terminology is vague and not very meaningful to most readers. I joke that my mother, an artist, thinks internal controls are a vitamin.
  
  
• Are points quantified to describe the impact of the issue?
  Put dollar amounts and other figures in as much as possible. How big is the issue?
  
  You can quantify the error, the issue, or the area audited.
  
  For example, on our cash reconciliation finding. You can quantify the:

  Error: checks have bounced costing the entity $250 in bank fees
  Issue: the bank account processes 400 transactions a month and averages a balance of $1M
  Area: the bank account tracks disbursements of the entity’s largest grant, the Peters Grant. The Peters Grant distributes $150 million dollars to sub-recipients each year.