easyMultiple Choice
CRISC Practice Question: During a quarterly control review, the risk team…
During a quarterly control review, the risk team discovers that a key manual approval control was bypassed in 15% of transactions due to a recent process change. What is the FIRST action the risk practitioner should take?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates often jump to 'restore the original control' (A) because it seems like a quick fix, but CRISC emphasizes that the first step in any control deficiency is to understand the root cause before taking action.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Conduct a root cause analysis to determine why the bypass occurred.
The first action is to conduct a root cause analysis (B) to understand why the control was bypassed, as required by the CRISC process of identifying the underlying cause before taking corrective or compensating actions. This aligns with the risk monitoring and reporting domain, where a control deficiency must be analyzed to determine if it is a systemic process failure, a training gap, or a deliberate override. Without this analysis, any subsequent action—such as restoring the original control or updating the risk register—may be premature or misdirected.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Restore the original control process immediately.
Why it's wrong here
Restoring the original process assumes the change caused the bypass without confirming why it occurred, and may break the new process's intended benefits. Reverting is tempting as an immediate containment step, but it would be correct only after root-cause analysis shows the change itself is the defect.
- ✓
Conduct a root cause analysis to determine why the bypass occurred.
Why this is correct
Root cause analysis establishes why the process change caused the bypass before remediation is chosen, preventing recurrence rather than treating symptoms. Investigating first satisfies the need to understand the control failure's origin, since corrective or disciplinary action without diagnosis risks repeating the same gap.
- ✗
Update the risk register to reflect the increased residual risk.
Why it's wrong here
Registering residual risk documents the exposure but leaves the 15% bypass actively occurring, so it is not the first action. Updating the register is tempting because it is a core CRISC deliverable, and it would be appropriate once the cause is understood and treatment options are being evaluated.
- ✗
Escalate to senior management with a recommendation for disciplinary action.
Why it's wrong here
Disciplinary action presumes culpability before the process change has been analysed, so it addresses people rather than the control failure. Escalation with such a recommendation is tempting because management owns consequence decisions, but the practitioner must first determine whether the bypass stems from the revised process design itself.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This CRISC question is part of Courseiva's 1,062-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CRISC practice question is part of Courseiva's free ISACA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CRISC exam.