This 10-mark question covered the topics of narrative notes, internal control questionnaires and engagement letters.

Part (a) for 6 marks required candidates to describe the advantages and disadvantages of narrative notes and internal control questionnaires (ICQs) as methods for documenting the system. Candidates’ performance was unsatisfactory on this question, with a number of candidates not even attempting it.

A significant minority of candidates did not understand the question requirement fully, and so instead of providing advantages and disadvantages for notes and then for ICQs, they provided answers which were of a general nature and just covered advantages and disadvantages of documenting the internal control system.

It is possible that these candidates did not carefully read the scenario paragraph preceding the requirement. This paragraph laid out that there were various methods available for documenting internal controls and it identified notes and ICQs, the requirement then followed on with the advantages and disadvantages of these two methods.

Candidates must take the time to read and understand any scenario paragraphs; these are intended to help candidates understand the question requirements.

Those candidates who understood the requirement often made the following mistakes:

• Lack of detail, the requirement was to “describe” and often candidates provided bullet point notes, this is not a sufficient level of detail to be awarded the 1 mark available per point. 
• Some candidates were confused as to who prepared the systems documentation, thinking that ICQs were produced by management, and so identified irrelevant advantages and disadvantages. 
• Providing definitions and explanations of what notes and ICQs are, rather than answering the question requirement. Definitions will not score marks unless they are a specific part of the question requirement. 
• Listing points in relation to internal control evaluation questionnaires (ICEQ)s rather than ICQs.

This is another method for documenting systems but was not part of the question requirement and hence scored no marks.