An open letter to Internal Audit Leaders
Dear Internal Audit Leaders,
I can empathize with your pain. For the over 28 years, I have been working alongside several of you in the government, public and even private sectors to help you meet the particular demands of your role. I have a lot of respect for what you do. Most of you have confided that you sometimes feel that:
- You are tasked with a seemingly impossible, and often thankless job, yet one that is critical to the success of the company or organization you work for.
- Since you are not on the revenue generation side of the P&L you do not always get the quality of support you need from your Corp functions (HR, IT, etc.)
- Your budget usually gets cut or, at best remains flat, yet the company’s risk exposure that you need to cover increases.
- If something goes wrong in the company, one of the first questions asked by the board is: “where was Internal Audit?”
- When you do find something and elevate a risk, you are often at odds with business leaders about the severity and acceptable remediation.
- The business is reacting to the external environment faster than your risk assessment cycle and you feel at times you cannot keep up.
Then, as an organization leader, you are still expected to:
- keep up with the profession, IPPF changes, adopt best practices,
- maintain a regular quality assurance program that demonstrates compliance to Internal Audit standards and evolving best practices,
- continually update your tools and technology, audit management systems, processes, etc.
- and, most importantly, provide opportunities for your team to develop, learn new skills, work together as a team, to achieve your organization’s objectives.
The list goes on. And, if you are one of the fortunate few that does have the budget and the right resources to manage all the above, you still need your practice support professionals connected to a global community that can help them identify opportunities to continually evolve your Internal Audit practice.
That is why I created Audit Practice Support.
My experience supporting Internal Audit for the past 28+ years gives me the perspective of the unique challenges you face. My education and experience in organizational development / behavior sciences and technology helps me create solutions that help you resolve those unique challenges. Solutions that are specific to internal audit, backed by behavioral science and continually elevate the performance of your organization, regardless of the size.
Here are just a few of the solutions I have created over years both as a consultant and as a professional practice leader for a Fortune 300 financial services company for 15 years.
- Facilitated leadership strategic planning sessions and led initiatives to elevate department performance
- Led audit automation and integration projects
- Created talent and leadership development programs aligned to the strategic objectives of the organization
- Created dashboards, reporting and department analytics
- Implemented Audit Management tools and technology
- Planned multi-day off-site (and virtual) learning events
- Created career models and skills assessments
- Created quality assurance programs (QAIP), policies, procedures, and prepared for external quality assurance reviews.
- Unified managers behind quality expectations
- Led audit management support teams, increased user adoption to free up IT and other auditors to do actual audit work
- Created department portals and knowledge management systems
The list could go on. Basically, whatever problems prevent you from a more efficient Internal Audit department, I have created a solution for it.
And today, I am pleased to announce that I have joined with a few customer experience professionals to bring these solutions to the entire Internal Audit profession at Audit PS.
Connect with me on LinkedIn, signup for our newsletter, join our community and enjoy the journey.
Jason Franzen
Founder and Managing Partner of Audit Practice Support (AuditPS.net)
