What is the opinion based on the Treadway Commission? (See paragraphs below) Please raise thoughtful questions, analyzing relevant issues, building on ideas, synthesize across readings and discussions, expand the class perspective, and appropriately challenge assumptions and perspectives.

The Treadway Commission is an important entity in the history of performance and internal auditing because it helped "define internal controls in terms of achieving three major objectives: effectiveness and efficiency of operations, compliance with laws and regulations, and reliability of financial reporting." (Ives, Hancox, 2014).

The Treadway Commission was responsible for the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations (COSO Report) that helped define the ground rules for what should be covered in an audit. They set up the five elements of an internal control.The control environment, risk factors, control activities, a system for monitoring internal controls and performances, and having an information system.

The five elements were established to help make fraudulent behavior and waste more difficult endeavors.The goal was to establish internal controls to help management and to create environment that deters bad behaviour and increase performance in the processes.The control environment is a tone that management sets in order to let employees and contractors know that internal control is a priority for the organization. The factors also help determine risk factors and how to mitigate them.Thirdly they put in place control activities, such as checks and balances to ensure that no one person has complete control over a critical process.There also needs to be a system to monitor the internal controls to make sure they are working properly and to help auditors to audit the controls.The last item is having some system in place to store and organize data, and make it easier to access information both by managers and auditors.

These are all important aspects to the performance audit and internal control worlds, both publicly and in governmental entities.

Reference:

Ives, Martin & Hancox, David (2014) The Theory of Government Performance Auditing, Albany, NYwww.davehancox.com