A presentation was made by Neeraj Kumar, Senior Vice-President Internal Audit of Emirates Group at the Millennium Hotel inDoha on April 6, 2008 to the members of the Institute of Internal Auditors and Scientific Accounting

The one unifying aspect in the practice of internal auditing across the world is the response even the best-crafted and expertly researched report gets from senior management: Silence. Internal auditors fret about management's inability to see the importance of their contribution, and put it all down to management's inability to understand the auditor's perspective.  In fact, it is internal auditors who do not understand Neeraj argued.

Internal auditors fail to understand what goes into the creation of enterprise value.  They understand the processes, procedures, manuals and rulebooks.  They believe in error  that these are the ingredients of enterprise value. Management is engaged in the production of enterprise value.  Each business venture, each business decision is a leap of faith into the unknown a risk.  And this is what auditors must understand and address if they do not wish to have a deaf ear Kumar stated with the conviction of a life long auditor.

Neeraj departing from convention proposed to the auditors. To equip themselves to profile key decision-makers and make sense of the energies that drive them.  Auditors may need at times to persuade the business to lower the safety net of rules and regulations, perhaps even encourage a guarded non-compliance.  They should learn to spot opportunities in numbers as a business leader would, and then assist the business in preparing for that necessary leap into uncertainty

The CEO does not need a Chief Auditor to describe the chaos in which business decisions are taken, but rather to make as much sense of it as possibleat that point in time, for time is of the essence in the world of business.  To keep in step with the CEO, to be a companion in that journey into the unknown, the Chief Auditor needs to inspire trust in his wisdom, judgement and understanding of the business. The challenge for the internal auditor, in a word, is how to gain that trust, how to win that confidence. The internal auditing profession has gone through an evolutionary cycle, from being a bloodhound to a watchdog to a consultant to a business risk expert.  It is time now for another paradigm shift, to being a confidant to the business stated Neeraj

This new frontier has already been defined for internal auditors.  The focus is on human attributes. Neeraj warned auditors that neglect of this fundamental shift is only at their own peril.  More than 150 years ago, Charles Darwin wrote, It is not the strongest of species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. If internal auditors do not now read the writing on the wall, they will go rapidly from being an endangered species into an extinct one.