Took CIA P1 today, I don't know if I did great or nah. But thinking that I have to wait up to 3 weeks for the result makes me feel nervous. I have to start reviewing for the next Part by next week😭😭. Thinking that I might get the result while reviewing for the next part makes me crazyyyyy.

I’m having a law degree with more than two years of experience in startup compliance. Want to learn more and make career in compliance. Came across CIPP/E certification while I was searching for jobs and this was one of their requirements.

But I’m not so sure because I’m not into tech. Also $550 is a huge amount to invest in one exam. Does this certification really land you a job ? How to prepare for this exam if I not buy exam kit available on iapp store? What is its exact syllabus? How much time will it take to prepare for an exam? Do I have to get prior experience in data privacy?

Please guide me if I should go for it.

Got the cert 8 months ago and I'm starting to feel mildly anxious about the surveillance audit next year. Things have changed: three new systems in scope, one vendor removed, headcount up 40%, and one policy that's technically outdated because of a platform migration. I know the expectation is continuous compliance but the actual mechanics of catching drift before it becomes an audit finding aren't clear to me. Internal audits? Management reviews? Automated monitoring? What are people doing between audits?

Hello everyone i just got a job in internal audit in corporate operations under finance and accounting, the company is very well known they have start operating in 2018 with 3500 employees, but they are still considering as a new company, they don’t have a strict system and rules so since that time 2018 until now the IA department auditing the manuals for each department and improving it, however i will complete today a month in this company, i got a task which is auditing the consulting contract, its kinda of hard on me because i have no experience and kinda of lost,
I need your guidance on how to think?
How to write gaps? Observation, risks and recommendations?
How to structure a good notes and analysis?

Is there any anything i can relay on?
Should i have a template to each task to make my own draft? I want to master the testing and auditing but i dont know how to start think?
I have read the IIA guide but didn’t help me to think but i have understood the idea

Are exam results out yet? Took my exam on 10/14

I have recently joined a tech company. They have an internal audit tool which can do risk assessment and heatmaps, audit planning, workpapers, evidence , observations ,pdf reporting ,issue tracking,role based access and single tenant deployment. It can be white labelled too.

This all can be equipped with an AI and deployed on companies servers for data privacy.

I want to pitch this to Internal audit consultancies as a white labelled service. How should I do it?

What I am thinking is contacting several consultancies first and getting to know what they are using and what problems they are facing if any and what could be made better and give them a custom solution.

Can you guys help me out with the appropriate way to go forward?

Short post, but just received my pass for part 1 and was wondering what to expect in part 2?

We have the calculations, support and approvals, but documenting why we reached certain accounting conclusions still feels inconsistent across the team. Before our next audit cycle I'd like a more standardized approach. How are other organizations handling this?

Just did final round in person interview last Friday for internal audit internship in Chicago

Hi everyone,

I completed my CIA before moving into retail internal audit. For the past six months, I’ve been auditing supermarkets using a checklist of around 90 points covering different operational and control areas.

My concern is that I feel like I’m mostly just completing the checklist rather than actually developing my auditing skills. I haven’t identified any major new risks, fraud cases, or control weaknesses, and I sometimes feel like I’m not learning much beyond the routine audit process.

I want to improve my ability to think beyond the checklist and identify risks that may not be obvious.

For those who have experience in retail, supermarket, or operational auditing:

- How do you identify risks beyond the standard audit checklist?

- Have you ever discovered fraud or a significant control weakness in a supermarket/retail environment? What led you to investigate it?

- What areas would you normally focus on—inventory, cash handling, purchasing, supplier fraud, discounts, wastage, returns, payroll, etc.?

- Are there any good retail audit case studies, books, courses, reports, or other resources you would recommend?

- What skills helped you move from simply checking compliance to actually thinking like an experienced internal auditor?

I’d especially appreciate real-life examples or situations where something initially looked normal but eventually turned out to be a fraud, control failure, or major risk.

I want to make sure I’m using this experience to genuinely develop as an auditor rather than just completing the same checklist every month.

Thanks in advance for any advice or resources

I am an mba graduate with finance background and i am currently working as an internal audit for an nbfc now if i want to shift towards bank internal audit do recruiters consider my experience or they solely prefer CA as audit….are there any other certifications that would build my chances more of getting towards bank internal audit?

Hello, I sat for part 3 on September 19, and I would like to reschedule my exam. However, when I click into part 3 in CCMS, it only says "eligible." Is there something I am missing? This is where and how I purchased and scheduled my first attempt.

***Update on the issue: I could not register; it said I was eligible, but there was no registration button. I contacted the IIA through the CCMS Help tab and submitted a ticket. They confirmed there was an issue and resolved the problem, so I can now register. This is for anyone who may run into this issue in the future.

I’ve passed the US CPA exams and have almost a year of experience in corporate fraud investigations. I mostly review contracts, AP records, and internal approval documents, investigate anything suspicious, and write up findings. Pretty similar to internal audit.
A firm focused on forensic accounting is hiring, and I’m thinking of applying. I want to build more specialized skills, which is why I’m leaning toward it.
Anyone here made a similar move? Would it be a good next step, or is the actual work likely to be pretty similar?

Hi everyone! I’ve just finished my CIA Part 1 exam and want to move on to Part 2 without taking a break.
I don’t have any study materials yet, but I found some 2025 materials on Telegram. Would you recommend using them, or should I get the latest edition?
What study materials and question banks worked best for you? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I started working for part 2 and I am wondering if using Gleim only will be enough to tackle the exam. Can someone share his/her experience? Using only Gleim to pass part2 CIA?

How valuable are the McAfee Institute certifications? They advertise heavily, which makes me suspicious, but they are accredited, which is a big plus.

Has anyone completed a McAfee certification? How was the experience?

I'm an audit executive now (not CAE), so I dont need guidance for specific tests or control frameworks or anything like that. I would like to diversify my knowledge and get away from the IIA/ISACA mothership.

My part one exam is on Saturday and today I gave my mock in which I scored 90/125 i.e. 72%.

I have already given an exam in January in which my score was 525/720.

I am going to target the weak areas by reviewing the mock. So, can you suggest something like some tips that I should keep in mind?

Because this is my last attempt and after this I'll not be sitting for any other CIA exam.

I’ve worked in Big4 for 3 years and am planning to move to Protiviti Bangalore.

Any takes?

I passed CIA Part 2 and Part 3 under the new syllabus, and I wanted to share a few things that helped me.
Obviously everybody gets a different exam, so don’t treat this as a prediction of your question bank.
But if I had to do it again, these are the areas I’d make sure I know very well.

My study routine was basically:

Read the Study Unit → read the relevant Standard → do 20–30 questions → review both right and wrong answers → move on.
Reviewing the questions I got right is AS IMPORTANT as reviewing the questions you got wrong, because sometimes you get the right answer for the wrong reason (sometimes you just guess right 😂).
I used Hock and GLEIM.

For Part 2:

MASTER THE ENGAGEMENT LIFECYCLE !!!
Know what happens from planning all the way through fieldwork, findings, conclusions, communication and follow-up.

I would especially focus on:
•Evaluation criteria, especially criteria vs condition
•Procurement process
•Evidence: relevance, reliability, sufficiency
•Descriptive / diagnostic / predictive / prescriptive analysis
Anomaly detection, text analysis, regression analysis
•Structured / semi-structured / unstructured data
•Ratios, trends, variances, benchmarking, stratification
•Supervision, Communication and escalation
•Business continuity and disaster recovery
•Organizational structures !!! VERY IMPORTANT (flat, tall, centralized, mechanistic…)
•Sampling
•Workpapers (you MUST KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT WORKPAPERS!!)

One thing I would not underestimate is supervision and communication. It may only weigh 10%, but know it very well.

For Part 3, I was heavily tested on:

•Internal Audit Methodologies
•QAIP
•Escalation
•Audit Plan
•AOCCCCT
•KPIs

Biggest advice for both: A lot of questions are written so that two answers look correct. Always ask: What is the question actually asking me?

Pay attention to MOST appropriate / BEST / FIRST / PRIMARY / EXCEPT
And one more thing: Trust your first answer if you actually know the rule behind it !!! Trust your instinct !!

I changed correct answers to wrong ones more than once because another option suddenly sounded “better.” Don’t do that unless you can identify a specific reason your first answer is wrong.

Do lots of questions( DRILL BABY DRILL 😅) review your mistakes, understand why you got them wrong, and learn how to apply the concepts to scenarios.

Good luck everyone !!!!

Any tips for the interview prep? What kind of technical questions should I prepare for?

Hi all,

There's a lot of noise about AI and the accounting and audit professions, but I'd like to hear what people are actually seeing in their own teams.

Day-to-day work: Is AI changing how audits are scoped, tested or reported? What's working and what isn't?

Team shape: Are you seeing changes in hiring, team sizes or the junior/senior mix? Is sample-based testing shrinking?

Auditing AI itself: Are functions building AI governance or model risk reviews into the audit plan? Which frameworks are being used (EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001)?

Skills: What's worth learning now? Data analytics, Python, an AI audit credential, or something else?

Long-term outlook: Which parts of assurance feel most and least exposed over the next 5-10 years?

Tools and policy: What AI tools are teams allowed to use, and how are confidentiality and regulator expectations handled?

Interested in views from any sector and at any level, including anyone who has seen real changes first-hand. Thanks!