KJ

Imagine attending an opening meeting for a scheduled audit. The audit topic is somewhat controversial and there has been pushback on the review’s timing. The auditor-in-charge worked hard to find time to get everyone to attend (8-10 people). The meeting is held in a huge conference room, so people are waving across the room and jokingly asking, “How’s the weather over there?” There is anticipation mixed with nervousness and anxiety as the auditors introduce themselves. The auditor-in-charge turns on the projector and forwards through the 12 slides in the opening meeting slide deck in about five minutes. She asks if there are any questions (there are none) and thanks them for their time. The group proceeds to exit the conference room feeling deflated. Everyone thinks, “What was the point of that?” Now imagine attending a closing meeting for a different audit that went well. The clients are engaged with the issues internal audit finds and want to use the audit to help drive improve...

I f you occasionally have doubts about the impact of internal audit on your organization, you are not alone. According to Deloitte's  2018 Global Chief Audit Executive Survey , a staggering 60 percent of chief audit executives (CAEs) believe the internal audit function does not have a strong impact and influence within their organization. And, while that's obviously bad news for internal auditors, it was actually an improvement from 72 percent in Deloitte's 2016 survey. Internal audit's impact and influence are strengthening at many organizations, but obviously there is still a lot of room for improvement. When I saw the survey results, I posted a question on LinkedIn asking whose fault was it if internal audit did not exert a strong influence on the organization. I assumed that most would say it was the CAE's fault. To my surprise, many responses pointed to management or the board. It's not always easy to admit our faults, but I was dismayed to see how ...

When you give your next speech, how do you think that your audience will be judging you? It turns out that, not unsurprisingly, a big part of how your audience will be judging you is going to be based on how your voice sounds to them. You may not be aware of it, but as humans, we are wired to have our emotions, memories, and in some cases even thoughts automatically triggered when we hear someone else’s voice . What this means for you as a speaker is that you are going to want to make sure that your audience likes listening to your voice so that they can experience the importance of public speaking. How can you go about making this happen? Evaluating Your Own Voice In order to understand how you sound to your audience, the very first thing that you are going to have to do is to take the time to evaluate your own voice . After you’ve given a speech, you need to think about how it went. Ask yourself if your voice came across as being influential or was it ineffective? When you w...

Anyone who spends time with internal auditors will quickly learn there is a quiet passion that drives many of the best practitioners. It is built on genuine desire to help our organizations, the well-earned respect from those we interact with, and unwavering pride in the service we provide as internal auditors. Yet, as a profession, we often struggle to explain what it is we do. This challenge is so commonplace, we've learned to joke about it. One of my favorites is about the man who instructs his child to tell his classmates that he works at McDonald's, because it's easier than explaining he's an internal auditor. This self-deprecating attitude among internal auditors is pervasive. In my many travels as president and CEO of The IIA, I have seen this humility and reticence among my peers all over the world. This may be at the heart of why we struggle to explain what we do.  The next time someone asks: I am an internal auditor! I serve my organization to p...

Managing people is hard. Among other things, it typically involves filling out tedious amounts of paperwork and dealing with office politics on a whole other level. But it’s especially difficult for first-time managers, who don’t have the benefit of years of experience to help them navigate inflexible institutions or complicated work relationships. For those people, mastering five crucial skills early on can help. 1. How to run a meeting Meetings are an unavoidable aspect of the modern workplace, particularly so for executives, who by some estimates spend nearly 23 hours a week in meetings. According to one survey, 11 million meetings are held every day in the US alone. And about a third of those are unproductive, reportedly costing companies $37 billion a year. So, as a manager, respect your team’s time and your own time, and don’t fall into the trap of organizing too many ineffective meetings. Here are some tricks that can help: Make sure the meeting has a purpose. Bef...

Risk defines the world of the internal auditor. Ultimately, risk is what shapes our audit plans, directs our stakeholders, and determines our success or failure. That is why we spend so much time and effort helping our organizations identify, understand, and mitigate or leverage risks. Understanding the unique mix of risks our organizations face, and the risk appetites of our stakeholders, is crucial to internal audit adding value. A number of organizations produce annual reports that attempt to peer at the horizon to identify risks in the coming year. Sometimes, it is easy to predict what those risks will be, as some major ones are long term, if not perpetual. The challenge is to identify or anticipate unexpected, emerging, or atypical risks that may mature in the coming weeks or months, in hopes of preparing to gird against them or use them to benefit the organization. Two recently published reports, one from Gartner Inc. and the other from the European Confederation of Insti...

In today’s world where corporate scandals often make front page news, fraud prevention and detection are becoming a priority for management and decision-makers. An alarming fact reported by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (“ACFE”) stated that an average organisation loses an estimated 5% of its annual revenue to fraud, hence fraud is posed as one of the major risks facing an organisation (both financially and reputationally). Typically, a large majority of midsize to large organisations consider their internal and external auditors as the pivotal tool for uncovering fraud and taking preventive measures to minimise the risk of loss incurred due to a fraud. However, this doesn’t imply that independent auditors often identify fraud, in fact, the opposite is true in many cases.  ACFE’s Report to the Nations  points out the fact that auditors rarely find fraud – internal audit detects fraud 15% of the time, while external audit merely 4%. One reason auditors ...

Risk Management Chickens Came Home to Roost in 2018 Fines and regulatory settlements of past scandals made for many more headlines in 2018 involving Equifax, Wells Fargo, and Volkswagen. They also provided important lessons about risk management. Carillion Collapse Exposed Systemic Risk Management Problems The stunning downfall of one of the United Kingdom's biggest construction companies brought to light failures in board oversight, government oversight, and both internal and external audit functions at Carillion. The worst news from an audit perspective was what can only be described as a highly dysfunctional independent assurance process laid bare by two parliamentary select committee investigations. One committee report described the outside firms that provided audit or consulting services as a "cozy club incapable of providing the degree of independent challenge needed." The reports also include recommendations to create additional accountability for tho...

There are so many factors involved in making career moves that there is no simple answer. After long thought, it became clear to me that making career decisions is more art than science, and it sometimes requires a degree of blind faith. There are some things I would advise without hesitation, such as, be deliberate in your consideration, and don't make a career move decision based on emotion. Here are a few fundamental questions that anyone considering a career move should contemplate: What are my strategic goals, and would a change further those goals? I often counsel internal auditors to develop a career plan with clearly defined strategic goals and milestones. Such career plans should be reviewed on a regular basis and modified as necessary. The IIA's Career Map tool is built on this philosophy. If you are contemplating a move that does little to move you forward on that path, it may be time to reconsider. Have I been in my current role long enough to benefit fr...

"If someone you’re trying to influence doesn’t trust you, you’re not going to get very far; in fact, you might even elicit suspicion because you come across as manipulative. A warm, trustworthy person who is also strong elicits admiration, but only after you’ve established trust does your strength become a gift rather than a threat." - Amy Cuddy - People size you up in seconds, but what exactly are they evaluating? Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy has been studying first impressions alongside fellow psychologists Susan Fiske and Peter Glick for more than 15 years, and has discovered patterns in these interactions. In her new book, “Presence,” Cuddy says that people quickly answer two questions when they first meet you: "Can I trust this person?Can I respect this person?" Psychologists refer to these dimensions as warmth and competence , respectively, and ideally you want to be perceived as having both. Interestingly, Cuddy says that...