internal audit
How recommendations are perceived "Irrelevant", "impossible to implement", "developed an ivory tower", "they want us to do what?" ... These are all quotes that internal auditors hear quite frequently when it comes to their recommendations. And sometimes those quotes are accurate. As internal
board
Asking the essential questions A question we almost never ask ourselves as chief audit executives or internal audit directors is how motivated our staff are to audit a certain area. The reason our teams may not be motivated is actually rather simple, but not easy to accept: in our audit
internal audit
A Quick Introduction As I mentioned before, my organization started with the introduction of PRINCE2. My internal audit department is making sure we are learning the lessons we need to learn. The best way to do that is to practice what we preach. So we're applying PRINCE2 to
internal audit
Based on an internal audit recommendation, the organization I work for (my day-job, writing and blogging being my night-job so to speak) has decided to start implementing PRINCE2 for all its projects. Given we have about 200 concurrent projects, that is a challenge. I mentioned this was based on an
internal audit
What It Is Wikipedia defines confirmation bias as: ""a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses." As an internal auditor, confirmation bias is a risk. We may be too focused on proving our positions or our hypotheses we miss key information which
Stream of Consciousness
The baseline As CAE of a small audit shop in a complex environment, I have to comply with the IIA standards like any other CAE. The performance standard for planning purposes is of course "2010 - Planning", which states that "The chief audit executive must establish risk-based
Stream of Consciousness
Learned helplessness in organisations has become an agent of the resistance Ron Ashkenas wrote a very interesting article on the HBR blog a while back: in "Learned helplessness in organisations" he addresses the "external" excuses that process owners manage to come up with in order not
Stream of Consciousness
Richard Chambers recently published an excellent article on the rotational audit staffing model. I wanted to add my perspective as the CAE of a small audit department, active in an inherently complex sector, development aid. The reality of a small audit department The size of the audit department is most
Stream of Consciousness
Imagine the following theoretical scenario: you have an organization which has a significant number of different activities. It looks a lot like a typical Japanese supercompany, with diverse activities across the entire activity spectrum, not necessarily related to one another. You have one audit committee you need to report to.
Stream of Consciousness
Headline A number of recent publications have extoled the virtues of internal audit having a seat at the management table. I don’t agree. I think that a seat at the table for the Chief Audit Executive would probably be the worst place to be. We need to be in
Stream of Consciousness
I missed an important element when writing the short post in weaponizing internal audit. This post was inspired by a sentence written by Mike Monteiro in his new book, “Design is a Job”. When we talk about using internal audit as a defensive asset whose presence should ensure higher compliance,
Stream of Consciousness
This is a post about my current audit reporting workflow. It's based on working with an Apple computer. Why Apple? Simple, the software becomes ubiquitous. In the many years I used Windows, I never felt the software was not there. With Apple, I have this all the time.