Control and Risk Self-Assessment (CRSA) is a people based approach to gaining assurance based on the twin principles that (i) the people and teams doing a job or working in a function know best how to make it work and what gets in the way of it working better and (ii) that people want to do a good job and be ethical. CRSA uses various approaches including facilitated workshops, various control and organisational frameworks and staff surveys. The CRSA approach can generate extremely high quality information for senior management and boards which has a significant benefit over much of the other information provided. That is, the information has not been subject to amendment, distortion or deletion by middle management.

CRSA is particularly relevant to the human aspects of governance and risk and can be a key tool for understanding and assessing culture and behaviour in organisations.