Ethics & Standards
COSO Internal Control Framework
The model we use to evaluate your internal controls: its five components, the fraud risk concepts behind our skepticism, and the honest limits of what any control system can promise.
The COSO Framework
Every audit involves understanding and evaluating your internal control, the processes management relies on to keep financial reporting reliable. We do not invent a private definition of that. We work from the framework published by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission, the model used worldwide and built into U.S. regulatory expectations. COSO organizes internal control into five integrated components: the control environment, risk assessment, control activities, information and communication, and monitoring.
The framework also shapes how we think about fraud risk and why we audit with professional skepticism rather than assumed good faith. Just as important, it is honest about limits. Even a well-designed system provides reasonable assurance, never absolute assurance, because of human judgment, management override, and collusion. We will tell you plainly what your controls can be relied upon to do, where residual risk sits, and what an audit can and cannot guarantee.