I’ve talked before about the books that should sit on every auditor’s desk. This includes such things as Strunk & White’s Element of Style; some kind of grammar reference (I use Margaret Shertzer’s Elements of Grammar); William Zinsser’s On Writing Well; The Red Book; a real-live, honest-to-goodness, paper dictionary (yes, I look a lot of it up on line, but the paper ones come in pretty handy also), and a similarly constructed thesaurus.  

Today, I want to talk about risk and control. Now, I know such discussions can sometimes get a little dry; it is a subject on which we often think we are already experts. But this is the meat and potatoes of Internal Audit, and there is nothing wrong with spending a little extra time revisiting the subject. 

Last week I talked about how Henry Ford had benchmarked other industries (in particular the slaughterhouses) to come up with new ideas on how to make things run better in his own industry.  Two innovations from his observations were brought to bear on the factory floor – bringing the work to the workers and the specialization of workers on very specific tasks. 

More about the most interesting auditor in the world

I just received another excellent suggestion from an audit shop that wishes to remain nameless. (The humility of some of our profession’s greatest thinkers sometimes amazes me.) They were faced with two problems. First, they seemed to be spending countless hours negotiating findings with the auditees – hours they felt could be better served conducting more audits. Second they felt they were also wasting those precious hours following up on findings that were really the responsibility of the auditee.

Last week, for your dining and dancing pleasure, I provided part one of a two-part discussion regarding communication — about how the simple act of answering a question can have so much more behind it than just the words that are spoken. For part two I promised to continue the discussion by delving into the boredom of answering the question that is actually asked. I had some very interesting insights about the subject.