It’s easy to mix them up — IT audit and IT governance sound similar, and both deal with controls, risk, and accountability. But their focus is different.

IT governance is how an organization decides what should happen. It defines who has authority, how technology supports business goals, and how risks are managed day to day.

IT audit checks if that actually does happen. Auditors verify whether controls are working as designed and whether people are following the governance framework.

In other words:

Governance builds the system.
Audit validates it.

Both functions depend on each other. Without governance, auditors have nothing to measure against. Without audit, governance has no feedback loop to improve.

If you’re building a governance or audit career, try to understand both sides: how policies are formed and how they’re tested. When you can think like both a builder and a reviewer, you see the whole picture — and that’s where real value lives.