‘If you can't count it, you can't manage it.’ So goes the thinking behind much financial auditing practice. And although this view can be parodied as the notion that all there is to managing is knowing the numbers, it is true that if the systems which allow us to monitor financial movement in the business are not in place we don't have control of the business. The internal financial audit is seen as being required in order to ensure that the company's financial and accounting systems ‘are providing accurate and up-to-date information on its current financial position’ and that ‘the company's published financial statements represent a true and fair reflection of this position.’ The external audit reviews this process and comments on its satisfactoriness.

In recent years, the importance of the auditing process has been recognised and emphasised, partly as one practical response to the various financial scandals with which business has been faced and partly as the interactive nature of such processes has been acknowleged: the failures of the past can and should be the warnings of the present which inform the good practice of the future.