Whatever the nature of the audits to be undertaken, the audit work should be carried out by persons whose qualifications, skills and experience are commensurate with the nature, scope and complexities of the audit task.
The management should adopt a policy of recruiting personnel who possess suitable qualifications and appropriate training and experience. It assesses the resources required to undertake each audit and assign suitably skilled staff to the work, provide a good distribution of skills to auditing tasks and a sufficient number of persons for the audit.
It is not necessary that each auditor possesses competence in all aspects of the audit mandate. However, the team involved in a particular audit should collectively possess the necessary skills and expertise.
The management is free to acquire specialized skills from external sources if the successful carrying out of an audit so requires. It is for the management to judge, in its particular circumstances, to what extent its requirements are best met by in-house expertise as against employment of outside experts.
Procedures for continuous training and professional development of staff should be in place to enable personnel to perform their task effectively.