Which controls are primarily aimed at detecting and preventing errors or misappropriations?

The correct answer is financial controls, as these are specifically designed to safeguard an organization’s financial assets and ensure the accuracy of its financial reporting. Financial controls incorporate a variety of practices and policies that are put in place to prevent fraud, manage risk, and detect anomalies or irregularities in financial transactions. This includes checks and balances, audits, reconciliation procedures, and authorization processes that collectively work towards ensuring that financial data is reliable and protected from misappropriation or errors.

Financial controls also facilitate accountability and transparency within financial operations, making it easier to monitor compliance with established policies and regulations. By doing so, these controls serve a critical role in maintaining the integrity of the organization’s financial information, which is essential for decision-making and maintaining stakeholder trust.

While technical, administrative, and procedural controls do play a role in a robust control environment, they do not specifically focus on the financial aspects of an organization in the same manner that financial controls do. Technical controls involve technology measures to secure systems, administrative controls deal with policies and procedures for managing operations, and procedural controls focus on the specific steps followed to ensure compliance and eliminate errors.