Key Takeaways:
- Clearly defining roles, responsibilities, and deliverables with consultants and auditors help prevent confusion, scope creep, and inefficiencies.
- Regular communication and check-ins keep projects on track, surface issues early, and promote alignment between your team and external partners.
- Structuring contracts and billing to reflect project milestones ensures transparency, accountability, and predictable outcomes throughout the engagement.
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Whether you’re overseeing a performance audit, compliance review, or consulting engagement, bringing in outside consultants or auditors can add significant value to your work. External teams often bring specialized subject matter expertise — such as IT, cybersecurity, engineering, or industry-specific knowledge — that may not be available in-house. They can also offer additional capacity, helping your team meet deadlines, manage complex projects, or complete mandated audit work when internal resources are stretched thin.
For internal audit teams at state and local governments, these partners can enhance the quality of work, increase efficiency, and introduce leading practices — but only when expectations and roles are clearly defined. Managing these relationships effectively is essential to promote transparency, accountability, and successful project outcomes.
Here are five practical steps you can take to strengthen your work with consultants and auditors from the start:
1. Ask Clarifying Questions About the Project Team
Before signing an agreement, ask which staff listed in the proposal will actually be assigned to your project — and what roles they will play.
Key considerations include:
- Junior staff: Review the experience of junior team members who may complete much of the fieldwork. Ask what deliverables they typically produce (e.g., memos, reports, technical workpapers) and how their work is reviewed.
- Project directors and partners: Clarify the expected level of involvement from senior leaders. Determine whether they will be hands-on throughout the engagement or primarily present at key milestones.
- Referrals and past performance: If the firm was recommended to you, ask whether the team members who completed the referred project are available and whether their skills align with your needs.
- Subject matter experts (SMEs): Some firms include SMEs in proposals to meet qualifications, but they may have minimal or no role in the actual work. You can request the number of hours allocated to SMEs to confirm meaningful participation.
2. Define Deliverables and Deadlines in the Contract
Your agreement should include clear expectations for deliverables, timelines, and accountability. Include enforcement protocols or performance metrics to define what constitutes a completed deliverable. Consider adding key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure progress and quality — and ensure mutual understanding of terms.
3. Establish Roles for Engagement and Communication
Clearly define who is responsible for specific components of shared tasks that are often not explicitly called out in contracts (e.g., stakeholder outreach and engagement, outreach related to survey work, presenting findings to additional stakeholders, etc.). Ambiguity around roles can lead to scope creep, inefficiencies in the form of redundancies and gaps, or unmet expectations.
For example, activities like survey outreach and deployment or focus group facilitation should have clearly assigned tasks between your team and the third-party vendor (e.g., the vendor develops and deploys the survey and analyzes results, but your team conducts the outreach and publicizes the survey to the appropriate stakeholders). Additionally, if consultants are expected to present to specific boards, committees, or senior leadership, make sure this is stated upfront — and included in the contract as a deliverable.
4. Schedule Regular Project Check-Ins
Effective communication is one of the most important predictors of a successful collaboration. Regular check-ins help maintain alignment, surface issues early, and reinforce an environment of “no surprises”.
Set up recurring status meetings to maintain visibility and momentum. Monthly check-ins are recommended for longer projects. For shorter engagements (around four to six months), biweekly updates — even via email — can be effective.
At a minimum, schedule meetings during fieldwork to review preliminary findings — such as interview themes, survey results, and early recommendations. This helps avoid surprises, allows for early and consistent input, and builds buy-in more organically.
5. Align Billing with Project Objectives and Scope
Billing should reflect how the work will be delivered and what makes sense for the engagement.
For shorter or discrete projects, milestone-based billing may be appropriate to link payments to specific deliverables or phases. For larger or ongoing engagements — especially when working with the same provider across multiple projects — monthly billing may work better.
In the latter model, each invoice should be paired with a detailed status report outlining activities completed and progress against the scope of work so you can compare billing to project advancement. Aligning billing with the project’s objectives promotes transparency, predictability, and accountability.
Setting the Stage for Success
By taking these steps, your internal audit team can set the stage for a more transparent, efficient, and successful engagement. Clear expectations, regular communication, and outcomes-driven billing help keep your organization — and your audit or consulting partners — aligned from kickoff to closeout.
How MGO Can Help
Our State and Local Government professionals have hands-on experience working within public agencies and understand the unique challenges you face managing third-party relationships, compliance obligations, and operational demands.
Whether you need support with financial and compliance audits, performance audits, or internal audit activities, we can help you build confidence in every engagement and deliver results that make a lasting impact on your community. Reach out to our team today to find out how we can support you.