Control self-assessment is a technique used by businesses to 'self-check' their company to ensure that their risk-management and control processes are effective and in alignment with the goals and objectives. A key feature of control self-assessment is that employees who are in charge of the day-to-day activities do the checks of their own familiar work, opposed to hiring an external auditor who may not know how the activities actually work. This way, the employees may be able to provide a better assessment of the activity since they are the people who work with it directly. Control self-assessments are very beneficial to the company doing it. These benefits include, but are not exclusive to, catching potential fraudulent activity and creating clear parameters for accountability (as each person is responsible for a job).
The process begins with pinpointing each specific activity and determining effective measures of performance. It is important that the employees who have the best knowledge of these activities run the processes because they will be able to determine the issues. There are six methodologies for control self-assessment within a company:
- Internal Control Questionnaire assigned to the entire company
- Questionnaires that are designed by the company for a specific activity
- Control guides
- Interview techniques
- Control model workshops (run by the employees in charge of the activity)
- Interactive workshops (run by the employees in charge of the activity)
Control self-assessment was developed by Gulf Canada.
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