What is a potential result of an effective internal audit?

An effective internal audit serves as a systematic examination of a company's processes, policies, and systems to ensure they meet the established quality standards and regulatory requirements. One of the key outcomes of conducting internal audits is a better understanding of compliance.

When an organization performs comprehensive internal audits, it can identify compliance gaps with ISO standards, internal processes, and applicable laws and regulations. This improved understanding allows the organization to take corrective actions to align practices with requirements, ensuring adherence to quality standards. It can also foster a culture of continuous improvement within the organization, as employees become more aware of the standards they need to meet and how their roles contribute to overall compliance.

In contrast, options like increased profitability or reduced workforce are not direct results of an effective internal audit. Profitability can improve as a secondary effect of better compliance and efficiency over time, but it is not an immediate outcome of the audit process itself. Additionally, reducing the workforce is generally seen as a negative consequence and is not a goal of internal auditing, which focuses more on enhancing processes rather than making cuts. Lastly, higher customer complaints would indicate a failure in quality management rather than a successful outcome of an audit, as effective audits should ultimately help reduce such issues.