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First‐party audits refer to audits that are conducted within an organization by members of that organization. Many organizations have robust internal audit programs that assess both regulatory compliance and conformance with nongovernmental standards or MS.

Internal audits should be conducted by personnel who are technically competent, have audit training, and are capable of making unbiased and independent assessments. Internal auditors should not have direct responsibility for activities at the site being audited, as to maintain audit independence. An internal audit will generally assemble several individuals who are experienced within their respective disciplines and who may even know the facility and its operations. The audit team should be sufficiently large and broad to adequately address all the anticipated issues. When working with teams drawn from internal sources only, this can sometimes be difficult to achieve. Every audit also requires deft team leadership and communication, skills that may be difficult for an internal person to obtain or keep current if they do not audit on a regular basis. Lead auditors should have training in managing audits. Governmental bodies, professional associations and for‐profit organizations are a source for compliance and management system auditing training.

There are distinct advantages to the organization for using an internal audit team. The costs associated with an internal program can be lower than an external program, though the time commitment internal auditors must make to the program does have a significant impact for the organization. Participating on audits provides participants an excellent way to upgrade regulatory knowledge, and technical and leadership skills. Robust audit programs allow for the development and sharing of best practices within the organization. Once auditors have completed their work, they return to their respective sites and, hopefully, implement best practices or program improvements they have recently seen on an audit. On the other hand, unless the organization empowers the internal auditing function with the authority to clearly identify all issues, and sets the expectation that senior management will respond to these issues, some internal programs may lack the impact of an externally run program. For an organization the least desirable outcome of an audit is to identify concerns and then not act to address them.