SOC 2

What makes a SOC 2 audit high quality

Audit quality isn't service quality, and it isn't only professional standards. The real test is whether a reader of your report thinks: this tells me what I need to know.

Paul Wenham

2026-10-10

The reader test

Ask ten people what makes a SOC 2 audit high quality and you'll get ten different answers. Our test is simple: does a reader of the report think, "this tells me what I need to know"?

That's different from service quality: fast responses, effective support, experienced people guiding you through. Service quality is critical, but it isn't audit quality.

How the profession lost sight of quality

For years, CPA firms have complained about the declining value of audits: fee pressure, a race to the bottom, clients choosing the cheapest option. I know, because I was one of the loudest voices.

With some distance, I think we got something wrong. It wasn't just that clients stopped valuing quality. We lost sight of how quality creates value for the client.

The profession debates quality in its own terms: technical standards, methodology, documentation, risk, independence, firm quality management, real security. All of it matters, and it's the foundation underneath everything else. But none of it is why a technology company gets a SOC 2. They get one because somebody needs to trust them.

Three marks of a quality audit

It aligns to your real operations. The audit meets you where you are and makes sense for how you work. Compliance becomes a byproduct of what you already do, not a separate exercise, and what's reported is real.
It validates your commitments to customers. This is the point of SOC 2: confirming you deliver on what you've promised and what your customers expect. That's what satisfies enterprise security reviews and onboarding diligence.
It challenges you where it counts. Effective challenge pushes you to lift in the areas that matter to your customers, and therefore to your own goals. It doesn't arbitrarily impose a standard.

Five questions that define client-centric quality

Treating SOC 2 as report-or-no-report strips most of its value away. So does defining quality mainly as the audit firm meeting its own professional obligations. Client-centric quality asks:

Does the audit help you crush enterprise due diligence?

Does the report give your customers genuine confidence?

Does it surface what could undermine that trust before your customers find it?

Does it represent your business accurately and meaningfully?

Does it make it easier for an enterprise customer to say yes?

Why quality has commercial value

If better audit quality creates more trust, and more trust helps clients grow, quality stops being an abstract professional ideal. It becomes something clients have a commercial reason to pay for.

Our guide to meaningful TPRM signals connects that investment with how customers assess your service and how your compliance program can support reliable enterprise reviews.

That's the thinking behind what we call calibrated audits: audits calibrated to each client's goals, stage and context. They create real value for the client and for the customers who rely on the report. Technical quality stays the foundation; calibration is what makes it count.

For the practical areas that drive the report itself, read what makes a SOC 2 report quality, and check your SOC 2 auditor's credentials before you choose a firm.

See how calibrated audits work

Written by

Paul Wenham

Former PwC manager, founder of AssuranceLab and former Sensiba partner and Chief Innovation Officer. Now co-founder of Throughline, focused on compliance and assurance for AI-native companies.

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