Why do auditors read minutes and ask management questions?

Minutes and management inquiries help the auditor understand context, identify risks, and find evidence trails. They are not usually enough by themselves to prove a high-risk conclusion, but they can be very useful.

Minutes may reveal major decisions, unusual transactions, litigation, compliance issues, technology changes, restructuring, approval of exceptions, or governance concerns. Inquiry helps the auditor understand who owns a process, how a control is supposed to work, why results changed, and where documentary evidence should exist.

The important word is corroboration. If management says all access removals are completed within two days, the auditor should test access-removal records, ticket timestamps, or system logs. Inquiry tells you where to look. It does not usually finish the audit by itself.

So the answer is not "read minutes because the checklist says so." The answer is "read minutes and ask questions because they identify risks, responsibilities, events, and evidence sources."