Continuous Auditing with ACL: A Practical Guide to Making It Possible (1 CPE)

This is an archived session with Abdullah Zafar from the Auditopia 2026 ACL Conference.

Continuous auditing generally remains an audit department’s ambition. This session provides a practical, real-world, step-by-step roadmap for making it a reality. You’ll start with a risk-based strategy by identifying the most critical, system-controlled risks within each department, then roll out automated testing in manageable phases—such as focusing on three critical risks per department.

From there, I will walk through the full journey from building and refining ACL scripts, routing results into Diligent with tailored questionnaires, and activating automated email alerts to data visualization. I will also cover the over looked element: training focal persons within departments to act within reasonable timeframes, and the challenges you are likely to face along the way so you can avoid the pitfalls I encountered firsthand.

This session is designed for audit, risk, and compliance professionals looking for a practical, tested approach to move continuous auditing from dream to reality.

Learning Objectives

Participants will be able to:

• Apply a risk based strategy to scope continuous auditing (identifying critical and high system-based risks per department and rolling out automated testing in manageable phases across the organization)
• Build an end to end exception identification and reporting workflow (from ACL script development and testing, through Diligent based questionnaires and auto triggered email alerts, to training focal persons for timely action).
• Navigate common implementation challenges and present results effectively (avoiding pitfalls encountered along the way, and using commonly used data visualization tool within your organization (Power BI/Tableau) to give management clear, accessible visibility into audit exceptions.)

Field of Study: Computer Software & Applications (1.0 CPE)  ~   Program Knowledge: Intermediate  Duration:50 minutes