The Unified Audit Approach is a modern auditing methodology designed to combine financial, operational, compliance, and technology assurance activities into a single, streamlined process rather than treating them as separate exercises. It emerged because organizations increasingly face overlapping risks, including regulatory obligations, internal control weaknesses, cybersecurity concerns, and operational inefficiencies that cannot be effectively managed in isolation.
Traditionally, audits have operated in silos: financial teams validating statements, compliance groups addressing regulatory obligations, and IT auditors independently assessing systems and controls. The Unified Audit Approach integrates these efforts into one coordinated strategy, leveraging shared controls, centralized evidence collection, common risk assessments, and aligned audit execution.
This session will provide both a practitioner and auditor perspective on how organizations can reduce audit fatigue, lower compliance costs, improve control visibility, and support multiple frameworks through a consolidated governance and assurance model.
Jim Horton, Principal Partner at EugeneZonda will present a real-world enterprise use case built within a large healthcare technology environment, including lessons learned from designing and operationalizing a multi-framework control consolidation strategy. Joseph Kirkpatrick and Jackson Widener of KirkpatrickPrice will provide the auditor perspective on how firms are adapting to support unified audit methodologies, multi-framework assessments, and evolving client assurance expectations.
SPEAKERS:
Jim Horton, Independent Consultant at jimhortongrc / Principal Partner at EugeneZonda
Jim Horton is a cybersecurity governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) executive and independent advisor with more than 20 years of experience leading enterprise security, regulatory compliance, and risk transformation programs across SaaS, healthcare technology, fintech, and federal