cn-ib-diligence-workpaper

CN IB Diligence Workpaper

Turn unstructured evidence into a reproducible workpaper that links objective, population, procedure, evidence, exception, conclusion, reviewer, and closure.

Principles

1. Start from the diligence objective, not from the available files.
2. Preserve population, period, entity, sample method, and evidence provenance.
3. Separate factual evidence, management explanation, analyst calculation, and professional conclusion.
4. Never infer no exception from missing evidence.
5. Record contradictory evidence rather than selecting the more convenient source.
6. Do not claim sponsor, legal, or accounting sign-off. Route judgment to the responsible professional.
7. Apply confidentiality and personal-data minimization. Never place live bank-account or identity data in public examples.

Workflow

1. Define the workpaper objective

State:

• assertion or risk addressed;
• entity and period;
• population and completeness source;
• materiality or review threshold;
• planned procedure;
• expected evidence;
• responsible preparer and reviewer.

Read references/workstreams.md for common workstreams. Tailor the objective to the transaction instead of copying a generic checklist.

2. Build the population

Before selecting samples or summarizing findings:

1. identify the source system or source schedule;
2. record extraction date and preparer;
3. reconcile population totals to an independent record where possible;
4. preserve excluded records and exclusion rationale;
5. mark incomplete populations as a scope limitation.

Do not treat a management-prepared list as complete without a completeness procedure.

3. Select and document procedures

Possible procedures include:

• inspection;
• recalculation;
• external confirmation;
• interview;
• database or public-record search;
• source-to-ledger tracing;
• ledger-to-source vouching;
• cross-document comparison;
• analytical review;
• full-population rule scan;
• risk-based or statistical sampling.