The strongest audits run on clear, two-way communication. Finance teams know their business best, and auditors bring an independent view of where the risks sit. Good questions connect the two. With the right questions to ask your auditor at each phase, controllers, CFOs, and audit committees can set clear expectations, plan their workload with confidence, and get more value from every engagement. This guide walks you through key questions to ask at every stage of the audit process. Questions to Ask Before You Engage or Reappoint Your Auditor Can we see your most recent regulatory inspection or peer review results? The PCAOB publishes the public portion of every firm inspection report. Start with Part I.A, which lists audits where inspectors believed the firm lacked sufficient evidence for its opinion. For private company auditors, the AICPA’s public file shows peer review dates, but firms choose whether to publish full reports. If yours hasn’t, ask. What non-audit services do you provide us or our affiliates, and how do you protect independence? Public company audit committees must pre-approve non-audit services, and PCAOB Rule 3526, one of its ethics and independence rules, requires a yearly written description of any relationship that may bear on independence. Listen for a written policy and a pre-approval process the committee actually runs. “That’s never been an issue” is a weak answer. What drives fee changes year to year, and what triggers out-of-scope billing? Write the triggers into the engagement letter: late prepared by client (PBC) items, restatements, new standard adoption, and acquisitions are common ones. Then ask when you’ll hear about an overrun. Mid-fieldwork leaves time to respond. What does the calendar look like from planning to sign-off, and what happens if we miss a PBC date? Get dates for every phase through report issuance, plus the cost of a slip: a pushed schedule, extra fees, or both. Questions to Ask During Planning and Fieldwork What are the significant risks you’ve identified for us, and how did you set materiality? PCAOB AS 1301 requires public company auditors to discuss significant risks and the audit strategy with the audit committee. Expect the risk areas, the materiality benchmark, and the reasoning. If the risks match last year’s while your business changed, ask why. Which areas will you test with controls reliance versus substantive procedures, and where will you sample versus test full populations? The answer sets your workload. Controls reliance needs clean control evidence. Substantive testing needs more documents. Full-population testing needs complete, reliable data extracts. Can we get the PBC list with an owner, format, and due date for every item? Mismatched formats and unclear owners stall fieldwork as often as hard accounting questions do. Do you want our technical memos and position papers on new or judgmental areas before fieldwork starts? Send ASC 842, ASC 606, and IFRS 16 judgment memos at planning. Early questions cost less than late-stage back-and-forth. How and when will you tell us about proposed adjustments or disagreements? AS 1301 only requires communication before the report issues. Ask for a running list of proposed adjustments and a regular status call so nothing new appears at the closing meeting. Questions to Ask About Findings, the Audit Report, and the Management Letter How do you classify our control issues: deficiency, significant deficiency, or material weakness? Under PCAOB standards like AS 1305: Control deficiency: a control doesn’t let people prevent or detect misstatements on a timely basis Significant deficiency: less severe than a material weakness, but serious enough to merit the attention of those who oversee financial reporting Material weakness: a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement won’t be prevented or detected on a timely basis Ask whether smaller deficiencies could combine into a bigger one. Our SOX audit guide covers classification in depth. Which misstatements were corrected, which were left uncorrected, and why? AS 1301 requires the auditor to share uncorrected misstatements, explain why it judged them immaterial, and report corrected ones that weren’t clearly trivial. The corrected list shows where your close process missed something. Are there critical audit matters or key audit matters, and what drove them? Critical audit matters (CAMs) under PCAOB AS 3101 involve especially challenging, subjective, or complex auditor judgment on material accounts. Key audit matters (KAMs) under ISA 701 are the matters of most significance in UK and international listed entity audits. Ask for draft language early to check it against your disclosures. Did you encounter any disagreements with management or difficulties in the audit? Auditors must report significant disagreements, resolved or not, and difficulties like management delays, under AS 1301 and AU-C 260 for private companies. You want to hear “no.” What should we change before next year to shorten the audit? Good auditors name specifics, like late PBC items or reworked reconciliations. That’s next year’s prep plan. Questions to Ask About How Your Auditor Uses AI Where in our audit do you use AI or automation, and what’s still done by a person? A firm that knows its methodology can map each tool to a procedure: extraction, matching, analytics, sampling, or drafting. A vague answer means it hasn’t. Where is our data stored, who can access it, and is it used to train models? Ask about third-party processors and retention too, and get the answer in writing. Can you trace an AI-assisted conclusion back to the source document and the standard it relies on? This is the practitioner test for auditable AI. If an output can’t link to its evidence and guidance, neither your team nor an inspector can verify it. Who reviews AI-generated work at your firm, and who signs off? A strong answer names the reviewer and confirms the engagement partner still owns the opinion. Questions to Ask About Internal Audit Reliance Which of our internal audit work can you rely on, and what documentation do you need to do that? Public company auditors must tell the audit committee how much they plan to rely on internal audit. Ask which areas. How do you assess the competence and objectivity of our internal audit function? PCAOB AS 2605 requires it, and AU-C 610 adds a check for a systematic, disciplined approach. Share your latest external quality assessment. Can we coordinate testing so your team and ours aren’t requesting the same samples twice? Align calendars and agree on one evidence repository. How to Use This List Questions work best when they become a habit. Share the relevant section with your audit team before each phase starts, and keep every answer in one place, with the date and the person who gave it. Over a few engagements, that record shows how the firm communicates, where your process runs smoothly, and what to raise at reappointment. The same idea applies to the audit itself. When each answer links back to the documents behind it, both teams work from the same evidence. Trullion’s platform connects audit procedures to source documents, so that trail stays intact from planning through sign-off. To see what each side prepares along the way, explore our audit checklist and the five phases of the audit process. FAQs What should you not say to an auditor? Don’t guess or present an estimate as fact. Say you’ll check. For public companies, SEC Rule 13b2-2 prohibits officers and directors from misleading or improperly influencing the auditor. What questions do auditors ask during an audit? Expect questions on fraud risk, related parties, estimates, control changes, litigation, and events after year-end. How do you choose the right auditor for your company? Compare industry experience, inspection or peer review history, the named team, independence, and fee transparency. What questions should an audit committee ask the external auditor? Ask about significant risks, CAMs or KAMs, uncorrected misstatements, disagreements, difficulties, and independence. Most map to required communications under AS 1301 and AU-C 260.