Director of Audit Services, Indiana State Board of Accounts

My name is Chase Lennon, and I'm the Director of Audit Services at State Board of Accounts. The Board of Accounts is the audit agency of the state. So we audit the state of Indiana. We audit the whole government, such as schools, cities, towns, counties, special districts, and we also do non-government entities, like not-for-profits that receive public funding too. When auditing the school, we would contact the elected officials, the superintendents, their board, and then schedule an entrance conference. So at the entrance conference, we will talk about the scope of our engagement, what type of audit we're gonna do, make sure they understand when we're gonna be there, what we're gonna request, and kind of the timeline of the audit. Then after that meeting's done, we can commence the audit. So, that would normally consist of risk assessment questions, getting documentation at the beginning, kinda assessing the whole environment of the unit. And then we would go in the testing of either internal controls or more like substantive tests to substantiate the amounts in the financial statements. And once we all wrap up that testing, we get all our queries answered, we gather audit evidence. We have the exit conference and explain all the findings, and make sure they understand everything, and prepare the audit report, and we put it on the website for public view. So my main role is to go out and train school officials, township officials, to make sure that they know the requirements, what they need to do. The compliance requirements, federal state statutes, make sure they're doing everything right before we actually go in and audit. Most of our meetings are either day long trainings or couple hour sessions where we either talk about changes that we've had at the Board of Accounts or changes to audit requirements, where they need to be aware when we come in next time. If they don't have these requirements done, then we'll write the up in certain instances, but we also teach them about how to do their jobs. We answer any questions they have, even if it doesn't relate to the audit. Just so they can do their job better. Our main goal is try to fix problems that units have.