Welcome to The Soapbox, a forum aimed at promoting idea-sharing and dialogue among members of the internal audit community. We welcome submissions on any internal audit related topic and encourage practitioners from all levels of experience to participate. Entries should be submitted to the InternalAuditorOnline blog editor, Tim McCollum, at tim.mccollum@theiia.org for consideration. Posts may be edited for clarity and length.    

Organizations around the world are losing billions of dollars in wasted project spending that is usually hidden from management and investors. The internal auditor as “project auditor” has a great opportunity to mitigate these losses and add value to their organization’s bottom line. Although some internal auditors may think they do not know or understand the process of managing a project, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The analytical skills displayed by today’s internal auditors can be put to great use in this arena, because audits are best managed as individual projects to be completed successfully and on time. And a key component of transitioning audit staff to become project auditors is for chief audit executives (CAEs) to position themselves and their audit staff as business partners who can provide insight on key projects and strategic initiatives. 

The recent Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) revision of its Internal Control–Integrated Framework has me thinking it is a perfect time to scrap everything.  

Traditional reviews of legal departments and processes simply focused on ensuring legal invoices were documented appropriately. This is a typical control function, but it does not focus on the true issue of budget size and organizational risk.

The concept of an internal auditor being a “rock star” is intriguing, particularly in adding an element of excitement to the profession. But, there is a certain edginess to a rock star, with nostalgia for Woodstock, Liverpool, and the Grammys … do I need to say more?

Internal auditors are viewed by many as an extension of top management. Therefore, it is a good practice to issue timely audit reports to management who are vested in the audit results. Timely audit results show management that not only are auditors committed to improving the deficiencies identified in the audit, but also that they are committed to helping management improve the overall effectiveness and efficiencies of the organization’s operations.

Having started my career in banking outside the internal audit function, I can clearly remember how annoyed and concerned I was when internal auditors would show up in our department. There would be a general alert reaction from everyone as well as a sense of impending danger. The sentiment was clearly based on the fact that we were a team and these people were there to expose our weaknesses and problems.

How does your organization’s IT department support the business? Beyond the daily help desk calls, when it comes to strategic IT-related decisions, who should be involved? Should those with IT know-how have most of the say, or should operations personnel make the call? Can they work side-by-side to make this salient decision?

A 2007 article in The Economist reported that “[a] large number of both IT and non-IT executives say that the primary obstacle to alignment is a poor understanding among business leaders of how IT should support business objectives.” The article further reports that the “perception is reversed when it comes to how well IT executives understand the business. Only 24 percent of IT executives identified IT’s lack of business understanding as a chief obstacle, whereas 33 percent of non-IT executives perceived this to be the case.”

Occasionally, internal auditors stumble upon a “find of the lifetime” when they discover that several employees in their company have been surreptitiously bilking the business for millions of dollars. These auditors are given a red carpet, a bigger office, and celebrity-like treatment; they might even find their names in a forensic accounting textbook one day. But let’s be honest, how many of you can put that on your resume?