QAIP

The Standards require a QAIP covering both internal assessments — ongoing monitoring plus periodic self-assessment — and an external assessment by a qualified, independent assessor at least once every five years. The CAE is responsible for it, and results are communicated to the board.

In practice QAIPs are treated as a compliance exercise performed shortly before the external assessment falls due, which wastes most of their value. The ongoing monitoring component is meant to be continuous evidence about the function’s own quality: whether engagements met their objectives, whether conclusions were supported, whether reviews caught what they should.

Functions with structured workpapers have a significant advantage here, and it is rarely mentioned when people discuss modernisation. When work is a queryable record rather than a folder of documents, quality monitoring can be computed — review turnaround, rate of findings overturned on review, how often conclusions were reached without a documented population. A function that has modernised its documentation gets its QAIP evidence nearly for free, and gets it in time to act on it.