My good friend, Dan Swanson, asked me to write the introduction to his new book, Raising the Bar, with the topic being the future of the profession. Right after I sent it to him, I met with other practitioners and thought leaders in Australia, Atlanta (the IIA International Conference and committee meetings), and Malaysia.

An article in yesterday's Financial Times covering the trial of trader Jerome Kerviel includes some interesting nuggets.

The other day, somebody replied to one of my blogs — and got my blood boiling! So, here is the rant for the week.

Essentially, what they said was while it was good in theory for the CAE to focus on providing assurance, in practice the CAE has to be very conscious of and responsive to management expectations. Management wants to see real value from internal audit, and therefore internal audit needs to demonstrate tangible savings in costs, and such. If internal audit is to get management support for its existence, a reasonable budget, etc., then focusing on providing assurance is not the answer.

The root cause of almost every internal control issue is people. See this earlier discussion.

It could be that individuals charged with designing or performing the control lacked judgment, experience, training, or simply under-performed. It could also be that they had too great a workload and were therefore unable to perform at required levels, or had failed to perform their duties on a timely basis.