Free IIA CIA Part 1 (Internal Audit Fundamentals) Ethics and Professionalism Practice Questions
Ethics and Professionalism on CIA Part 1 covers the ethical principles internal auditors follow (integrity, objectivity, confidentiality, competency), threats to objectivity and their safeguards, due professional care, and professional skepticism. Judgment items dominate here: the exam asks which response best preserves independence, not just which definition is right. 20% of Part 1.
108 questions45 easy47 medium16 hard2026 syllabus
Sample Questions
Question 1
Easy
Under the Global Internal Audit Standards, which statement best describes professional skepticism?
🎉
Correct Answer: B
Solution
B is correct. Standard 4.3 (Professional Skepticism) defines skepticism as an unbiased mental attitude in which the internal auditor questions and critically assesses the reliability of information obtained during an engagement. It sits alongside due professional care and neither presumes wrongdoing nor presumes honesty; the auditor stays alert to conditions that may indicate error, fraud, or noncompliance and corroborates information whose source or preparation is questionable.
Question 2
Medium
A chief audit executive is revising internal audit policies. Which policy best promotes the objectivity of individual internal auditors?
🎉
Correct Answer: B
Solution
B is correct. Standard 2.2 (Safeguarding Objectivity) expects the chief audit executive to establish policies and processes that prevent and address impairments. Periodic rotation of engagement assignments directly attacks familiarity bias, the gradual loss of skepticism that builds when the same auditor reviews the same process and the same people year after year. Rotation is a preventive safeguard the function controls, and it works alongside disclosure and reassignment when an impairment does arise. The alternatives all shift some measure of control over audit judgment, scope, or evaluation to the audited party, which weakens objectivity instead of protecting it.
Question 3
Hard
An employee hands an auditor a coworker's personnel file, taken without authorization, and alleges payroll fraud. What should the auditor do first?
🎉
Correct Answer: B
Solution
B is correct. Two obligations operate at once. Standard 1.3 (Legal and Ethical Behavior) and Standard 5.1 (Use of Information) prohibit the auditor from using information obtained improperly or in violation of privacy expectations, so the file itself cannot be treated as engagement evidence at the auditor's own discretion. At the same time, Standard 4.3 (Professional Skepticism) requires an unbiased and critical assessment of the allegation, which cannot be dismissed simply because its source is tainted. Escalating to the chief audit executive resolves both: the allegation enters the organization's established channel for suspected fraud, and decisions about handling the improperly obtained document, involving legal counsel, and pursuing the matter through authorized sources are made at the appropriate level.
FreeFellow was built by Jeffrey Ting, a credentialed actuary and CFA charterholder who passed thirteen of the hardest exams in finance on the first attempt, and paid four-figure prep fees for every one. The learning itself was always free. The price was a moat.
So he started writing his own questions, then lessons, then mock exams, until it grew into a full prep platform covering 40 finance credentials with more than 44,000 original practice questions. The name says exactly what it is: the question bank is free, and Fellow is what you become once you pass.
01
Cost shouldn't decide who gets in.
The exam is a fair gate. A four-figure prep course is not. FreeFellow takes the second gate down, so the exam is the only one left.
02
Free should mean free.
No trial clock, no email gate, no credit card. The question bank, worked solutions, lessons, and readiness score stay free, and they are enough to pass.
03
Built by someone who sat where you sit.
He paid for the big-name courses, found nothing he respected, and built the prep he wished had existed. Not a marketing team that has never sat an exam.
