When conducting a consulting engagement to improve the efficiency of a production process, the internal audit team is faced with a scope limitation because several months of the production data has been lost or is incomplete. Faced with this scope limitation, the CAE should:
a. Halt the consulting engagement and conduct a separate assurance engagement to determine why the data was not available.
b. Discuss the problem with the customer and together evaluate whether the engagement should be continued.
c. Complete the analysis without the data, but include a scope limitation in the engagement report.
d. Report the scope limitation to the independent outside auditors.