Discuss the process of performing an external audit

What will be an ideal response?

To perform an external audit, a company first must gather competitive intelligence and information about economic, social, cultural, demographic, environmental, political, governmental, legal and technological trends. Once information is gathered, it should be assimilated and evaluated. A meeting or series of meetings of managers is needed to collectively identify the most important opportunities and threats facing the firm. A prioritized list of these factors must be obtained. All managers could individually rank the factors identified, from 1 (for the most important opportunity/threat) to 20 (for the least important opportunity/threat) or managers could simply place a checkmark by their most important "top 10 factors." Then, by summing the rankings, or the number of checkmarks, a prioritized list of factors is revealed.