We here at Internal Audit have always valued you - our customers. And now, we are happy to share with you an exciting opportunity to reward our most loyal customers. Welcome to the “Frequent Auditing Program” – a program designed to reward you, our auditees, for your hours of loyal devotion to us, your auditors. We know you’ve got a lot of questions, so let’s address them right now. 

I would like to apologize to everyone — everyone I know, everyone I don’t know, everyone who is counting on me, everyone I am counting on, everyone to whom I owe something, everyone.  The last few days, I haven’t been working at the quality level I expect of myself. Recent events have taken a whole lot more out of me than I suspected. (Maybe, probably, most assuredly, not surprisingly).

A song that needs no introduction, but definitely needs an explanation.

I’m about to wade into what I fear will be unpopular waters. This will fly in the face of a few of the conventions many of us have held when it comes to working in a volunteer organization. But it is a subject that really needs to be broached. Let’s start with a YouTube moment. 

Goes around; comes around. Yesterday’s news; tomorrow’s headline. What’s old is new again. Good ideas keep coming back to haunt us. Those who do not learn from history have to repeat the class, enroll in the three-hour lab held every Tuesday, and complete all compulsory homework which will make up 10% of the grade. All of this an introduction to lessons I learned/was reminded of when I recently stumbled across an old book from 1987. (Gad, 1987 is old?  What does that make me?) (Don’t answer that.) The book is The Empowered Manager by Peter Block. 

Hello boys and girls and welcome to Mr. Auditing’s Neighborhood. Did you have a nice day, today? I bet you did. Did you remember to tell all your friends about the wonderful things you learned about internal audit? I’ll bet you did. And did everyone look at you a little funny and back away slowly? I’ll bet they did. Don’t worry. Some day you’ll be doing audits and writing reports about how ineffective their operations are and they’ll all wish they had been nicer to you. 

It’s the end of January and I’m still working my way through some of the various top 10/50/100 lists that proliferate at year-end. I have before me one that is a little different. Trust Across America has provided a list of the “Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior 2012”. 

First, in the spirit of full disclosure: I work for Farmers Insurance which is owned by Zurich Financial Services. I don’t have a dog in this hunt, but wanted to start by getting that one on the table. Okay, moving on…) Something a little different today  as I swerve dangerously close to covering a subject that might be considered real audit work. (No comments from my various co-workers who, right now, are indicating surprise that anything I do would swerve anywhere near audit work.) But a recent study caught my attention.

(“Wake up.” “Wha..wha...”   “Wake up. Everyone else has already started.” “They wha…Started what?” “In fact, everyone else is already done!” “Done with what?” “You know, it’s probably way too late now anyway. What have you been doing?” “Working real hard. Really. Honest. Working real hard.  And too late to do what?” “To do your first post of the year. You know the one – look back at the year, accomplishments, top ten, the good, the bad, yadda, yadda, yadda.” “But I really wanted to do one.” “Too late now – it’s mid-January.   You can’t do a retrospective in the middle of the month.” “Well, I’ve never let things like that stop me before.”)

As promised, a holiday poem.