What is a Detective Control?

A detective control is designed to locate problems after they have occurred. Once problems have been detected, management can take steps to mitigate the risk that they will occur again in the future, usually by altering the underlying process. To be truly effective, an organization needs to follow through on the issues found by its detective controls on an ongoing basis.

Examples of Detective Controls

There are several situations in which detective controls can be used. Here are some examples:

Bank reconciliation. A bank reconciliation can detect unexpected withdrawals from a bank account.
Budget vs. actual comparisons. An ongoing comparison of budgeted to actual results is used to spot issues that may be worthy of a deeper review.
Physical inventory count. A manual count of inventory can spot instances in which the actual inventory is lower than what is stated in the accounting records.

Detective Controls vs. Preventive Controls

A detective control is considered to be less robust than a preventive control, since a preventive control keeps losses from ever occurring, while a detective control may result in initial losses before corrective changes can be implemented. Nonetheless, a robust system of controls should contain both detective and preventive controls.