The Binary Audit Philosophy: The Binary Mindset

A binary mindset is critical in the audit process. After processing thousands of audit findings, the consistent theme is that so many information choices exist to attempt to prove you are compliant that it becomes inevitable to have disagreements, resulting in remediation tasks. The problem is often that the compliance evidence does not specifically relate to the compliance language on an interpretive level.

First, the evidence should be titled with a similar reference to the compliance language to pass the smell test. Second, the choice of evidence should fit the consistent methodology used for this purpose.

Third, the choice should be corroborated by the information owner and subject matter expert, and finally the evidence should have a published basis that confirms that the evidence choice is valid.

Consider now that if the existence of this evidence always depends on only two options being positive or negative values, denoting the existence or non-existence of compliant evidence, the disagreements and arguments disappear.