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00:00:02 Speaker 1
The Institute of Internal Auditors presents all things internal audit in this episode, Aaron Benet discusses her transition from BIG4 auditor to internal audit executive, but they shares lessons on building strategic relationships, mentoring, rising talent and strengthening internal audits role. She also highlights creative.
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Recruitment strategies, evolving Audit committee communications and how to lead with intention in a changing talent market.
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Tell me So what organization you representing?
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I am the CEO of Humana, so I have been in Humana for around six years. But in the CIA role for around three years.
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How long have you been there?
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How big is your team? We have about 75 FTE's that we currently operate with, so we have Sarbanes-Oxley and then we have traditional internal audit. And then I have a little bit of risk management from an actuarial perspective that also.
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Reports me. Is it primarily North American focused or is it a?
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Global organization, yes, we are all.
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Domestic all domestic.
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So what brought you there into the CEO role? What brought you into the organization originally?
00:01:04 Speaker 3
Yeah. So I've born and raised in Kentucky, made my way to Louisville, KY to work for Deloitte. Actually, a long time ago. Spent about 15 years at Deloitte and thought I wanted to be a partner, went through that process and realized I was going to have to move around a lot. So really.
00:01:20 Speaker 3
Finalized. You know what? What did I like about public accounting? What were those skill sets that I learned? What did I want to continue to grow and and do? And there was a director opening at Humana, an internal audit at the time. And so I interviewed for that process. When I think about Kentucky for those that that aren't aware, like Louisville is a is a large market.
00:01:40 Speaker 3
Kentucky. But Humana is the biggest company there and so.
00:01:42
Wow.
00:01:43 Speaker 3
That was kind of my deciding factor of wanting to take the the big shop of Deloitte and going to another company where I could continue to grow and and use all the skill sets that I learned there.
00:01:53 Speaker 2
Was coming into Humana. Was that your introduction to going into an internal audit?
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Role.
00:01:58 Speaker 3
Yes, I went directly into a director of internal audit role when I first went in. I had our Sox team and our healthcare services team and then continued to have a couple of progressive, you know, positions from there, including taking on IT, taking on some expanded other roles.
00:02:17 Speaker 3
And then, uh, when the CA role role opened about 3 years ago, lucky for me, I'd had the opportunity and the director role for my other three years there to go to the audit committee meetings and present my CAE and I. And I always tell other CA's this was great for for my development. And so I do the same thing to pay it forward. But having the ability to present.
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In the audit committee at a director level and get that exposure to the audit Committee when the time came open for the CA, a role I had the table pounders, if you will, and the people supporting me to get that role that actually were on the audit.
00:02:50 Speaker 2
Committee, when you first came into the role at Humana was these audit committee relationships kind of the?
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Biggest challenge that you saw coming into the role of was is that what you felt like you could contribute the most point into it?
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Yes, I mean when I think about my, my past to Deloitte, I I was lucky enough to have the opportunity there to also work with audit committees and boards just through normal course. And so thinking about leveraging that experience, but then also leveraging the experience of coming from a BIG4 and and having that knowledge of of working with external auditors and bringing that into my socks.
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That was also helpful at.
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The time in your background.
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That you saw and Brent coming into the role, what were some of the strategies that you implemented to forment those, those relationships?
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Absolutely. So at Deloitte, you know one of the big things to try to make my way to partner continue to grow and the organization, one of the things that I focused so much on was networking and and building a brand right and always, you know, trying to take that next step and.
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So bringing that into my role at Humana and you know, seeing a larger picture, if you will, of where I wanted to go where I wanted the strategy for my team, you know it did take a lot of those same skill sets that I learned at Deloitte and and networking was huge. I will say that when I first came into Humana, I didn't have a large you know, network of internal auditors, right.
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Came from an external audit world and you know, honestly for my first three years at Humana.
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That my goal was more internal relationship building right to build my brand in the company because I knew where I wanted to get to in the CA, a role eventually and now having been in the CA role, I've learned the power of networking outside with other CPA's and others in the industry and so rely on that network tremendously as.
00:04:31 Speaker 2
Well, what strategies would you give?
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Someone going into that role to to improve that networking skill set.
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Absolutely. So I think internal, you know, from a building your brand up in inside a company when you think about that, I think that is just having personal connections, right.
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It's it's leveraging what you are comfortable with and if that's not the personal side, it's leveraging your work, right, leveraging all the great work you're doing and and using that to start to build those relationships. And as you're you're foot in the door, if you will. And then once you get in your foot in the door, continuing to build upon that, right send, you know, note of how happy you were that you could connect.
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And you know, could we do this again in 1/4 or whatever? Right, keep keep the pace going and eventually it becomes a strong relationship. But then on the external.
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Side for me personally, I I obviously have the relationship with Deloitte and and PwC are our auditors, but leveraging the BIG4 firms was huge for me in terms of placement of hey, who should I connect with and what would this look like and and so leveraging other people helped me to build my network and so I would say, you know, somebody that.
00:05:36 Speaker 3
That doesn't have, you know, an existing network leveraging whatever firms, whether it's IA or the BIG4 firms or regional firms, anybody that you have to help you kind of get places and and meet different people. And then I think it expands from there. It's amazing how quickly that expands.
00:05:52 Speaker 2
Now, I'm sure you meet a lot of people in in areas just like this, and you probably hear a lot of stories about how they're developing their internal audit functions, developing their relationships with external stakeholders. Is this a challenge that you kind of see other internal auditors leaders?
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Facing I do I think I was actually just having a couple of conversations yesterday about.
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You know, I think there are a lot of opportunities for us as CEO's to network and benchmark across each other and learn from an external perspective where I think the gap exists is actually the level below me or like the operations manager level or chief of staff level and internal audit to me.
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I think whether it's a firm, whether it's the IA, whether it's one of these awesome companies that are, you know, here I think there is a great opportunity to start having opportunities, whether round tables or otherwise to build that next layer of networking connections.
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Have you taken on what you would say is a mentoring role with kind of the internal otters below you? Are you finding ways to kind of implant these skills into them to expand out?
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Yes. So on my team, obviously I do quite a bit of mentoring and you know love seeing the growth of of people. When I left Deloitte, I had a number of people that followed me from Deloitte over to Humana internal audit team.
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So you know that's always building and growing. People has always been something that I'm really passionate about, but I also AM and I mentor as well saw one of my mentees here yesterday, so it was great to actually meet in person as well. But yes, always paying it forward, that is when I think about mentors across my, you know, career so far.
00:07:30 Speaker 3
Having people that are supportive, having those mentors having what I call the table pounders as well that are really wanting to help me advance our extremely important.
00:07:40 Speaker 2
I said I actually just came out of a presentation just a few minutes ago, actually, that gave a really great strategy involving rotating out talent, rotating in the internal audit function and rotating out. So not only do you have the experience of auditing, but you have the experience of being audited as well. And I can see a networking relation kind of developed and whether it's operations or legal or any other.
00:08:00 Speaker 2
Aspect of the organization. Do you do you guys have any any rotational strategies involved in this as well where you can have?
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Experience actually hands on with other aspects of the organization.
00:08:12 Speaker 3
We do so right now we have a formal intern development program for finance, but then we also have a nursing rotation program that has been great. It's been a couple of year long program for us.
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Six months on, six months off. But it's great to have those nurses come into our organization.
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But related to thinking broadly and being a talent incubator to the organization, we do have about 25% attrition a year and it's in our team and that is internal attrition where on purpose, you know, sending people out to various parts of the organization based on their goals, their development, where they want to.
00:08:39 Speaker 2
Oh wow.
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Go from there, even if it's on purpose.
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The rotation kind of that high. Have you seen any kind of challenges filling in the gaps that are being left behind? Yes, because you have to fill.
00:08:56 Speaker 3
That talent gap somehow you know, this is the first year honestly like end of 2024 early 2025 where we've all been seeing and hearing about talent gaps and the risk.
00:09:05 Speaker 3
There, right now, you know, Q4 early Q1 timing is the first time where we've started to see those challenges. And I'd be lying if I said I have a great plan in place for that, right? What we're doing right now is we have every single one of our senior and staff level positions posted. So we're, you know, in my opinion typically Q1.
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Early Q2.
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It was.
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Typically a good time to see who's all in the market and who's all looking right because you if you're in a corporation, you just get finished with the 10K filing the Sox process. Sometimes bonus payouts BIG4 firms are coming off busy season, so I'm really excited to see what the market and and who's looking and you know how we redeploy those. But one of the things that I've been talking to my peers a lot.
00:09:48 Speaker 3
About lately is because we all are having these problems and we all have the talent shortages is how do we really rethink what we're doing?
00:09:55 Speaker 3
Obviously, from data analytics AI there's lots of those type of opportunities for us to really rethink. But even rethinking the talent that we're bringing in, two things that I heard recently that I thought were fascinating, bringing in retired professors and you know, they're they're wanting that, you know, next role, right. They've already had this.
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Career and they're interested in coming in and and learning and growing and learning something new. But then the other one is retired military professionals.
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And bringing those in, especially in the cyber and IT areas.
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So we've brought in one retired military professional and he's actually on our sock side. But hearing his perspectives of coming in and seeing his desire to learn and grow, it's just it's just such a breath of fresh air. So definitely something that we're going to continue to expand on there.
00:10:44 Speaker 2
Now, going back to the recruitment of young talent, because that, you know there's.
00:10:48 Speaker 2
With the the older side, but we still have to concentrate on the younger side as well. You mentioned the job postings. I know that's kind of.
00:10:54 Speaker 2
A.
00:10:54 Speaker 2
Fine art for sure, but whenever you were writing these and kind of putting them either either in in the organization or externally, what are some of the things that you're really trying to hit to bring new talent into the profession?
00:11:09 Speaker 3
Yeah. So I would say historically we've been big, you know had a large focus on.
00:11:14 Speaker 3
Accounting backgrounds or audit backgrounds, I think for us, you know, BIG4, regional talent, local talent from a firm has always been something that we really tried to to target. I also think for us a lot of that market has been probably tapped and so that's why I'm interested in seeing you know what's what's new. I actually I talked about the importance of a network.
00:11:34 Speaker 3
Earlier, we share job descriptions quite a bit amongst our our network, which is really helpful. Like for me right now, not as much as somebody coming out of school, but.
00:11:44 Speaker 3
I'm getting ready to just look into more of an operations manager and and switch up our department a little bit from that perspective. And so when I think about that role, I'm using my network to get the job descriptions of what they're using. And so I think all of us are really trying to rethink from a right out of college perspective or a couple years into their career perspective. What does that look like and what is the right answer.
00:12:05 Speaker 3
And in the case of the retired military personnel, they actually like our job description was on having more of that accounting back.
00:12:12 Speaker 3
Ground, but we push him through anyways and are so glad that we did right. So I think for us it's we might not change that like a staff level job description, but we have a lot of applicants come through that don't necessarily always meet, meet all the preferred requirements, but really rethinking those preferred requirements when we're screening people and and you know.
00:12:33 Speaker 3
Having more of a debate internally as well to really rethink.
00:12:36 Speaker 2
So if you.
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Or let's say, hypothetically, if you were going to like a university or you were, you know, any kind of platform where you were really kind of trying to promote the profession, what would you say to any type of talent that may be considering and why should they look into the?
00:12:52 Speaker 3
Profession. Yeah, so I I laughed because my kids both think I have the both my I have a 15 year old and a 13 year old and they think I have the most boring.
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Job in the world.
00:13:00 Speaker 3
But I mean, I know I don't, right. And so I think really from a a college student perspective really explaining that somebody said it yesterday, how many other places in an organization do you get to go in and see the entire company very quickly, right and learn so quickly. And so I think.
00:13:21 Speaker 3
Having the goes back to like communication and really building on that and and network and relationships, and there's a lot of great that can come from that. Wherever somebody wants to go from there. And so I think it's.
00:13:35 Speaker 3
Selling that aspect of it and seeing examples of all the different you know, ways that that people have pivoted their career after starting out in an audit field as.
00:13:45 Speaker 2
Well, you coming into the role as as you did, I know you kind of have some some 2020 hindsight now to kind of look back?
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If you can go back and kind of talk to yourself, the game, what would you tell yourself that would have made your journey easier up to?
00:14:01 Speaker 2
Point.
00:14:02 Speaker 3
Yeah. You know, I think about this a lot because I spent a long time. I spent 15 years at Deloitte and I I loved my time in public accounting, but I'm using some of that right, but I'm not using all of that, that that I had and definitely didn't need to say that whole time. And so when I think about the rolling busy season and you know the all the travel and there's a lot of things.
00:14:22 Speaker 3
Think about those type of you know, work life perspective that I would really rethink because look like being a hard worker is extremely important. You know, diving in where you need to is extremely important. But I didn't need to take.
00:14:36 Speaker 3
All those steps that I took when I was at Deloitte and all that was on a mission to, you know, try to be a partner and and advance that way. But what I learned is there's so many other ways in the audit profession to continue to grow your career and be just as exciting. So when I thought one door had closed, it actually opened, which was exciting.
00:14:55 Speaker 2
What are some final thoughts that you kind of have that you kind of like?
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To take away that we maybe haven't covered.
00:14:59 Speaker 3
Yeah, absolutely. So big things, I I talked about the importance of networking. I'll expand a little bit on the audit committee side and the relationship that the CAE has with the audit committee, so.
00:15:11 Speaker 3
You know what? I've learned it through. That is, having those direct relationships are very important. I actually met with a separate, not my audit committee chair, but somebody on Sunday and her her thoughts were if your audit committee is not having those meetings and they're not taking the initiative to set up regular relationship, you know, discussion type meetings with you, take the initiative yourself as the CA.
00:15:32 Speaker 3
Right. And whether that's quarterly or monthly or whatever the cadence having that direct dialogue with the Audit committee chair only makes that relationship better.
00:15:41 Speaker 3
Also, one of the things that I've learned is ask for the feedback. Ask if you're meeting their expectations, or what else you need to do. What is their feedback? Right? Because everybody gets feedback and and that's a great thing. So you can continue to learn and grow along the way there. And I think, you know, having that healthy dialogue is just great.
00:16:00 Speaker 3
From as a career.
00:16:02 Speaker 3
Because no matter what company we're at in this role, we're always going to have audit committee chairs to build those relationships. And so starting those skill sets early and and building that is is a great way to go.
00:16:09 Speaker 2
Ohh yeah.
00:16:14 Speaker 2
Especially kind of in the CEO role. I think it's really important to have a thick skin and things without going into too many details or specifics. But in these feedback sessions, what are some of those common pieces of feedback that you get to see see improvements? And I'm sure a lot of those stories, I'm sure a lot of other internal auditors relate to.
00:16:17 Speaker 3
Yes.
00:16:31 Speaker 3
Absolutely. And I think it's what I've learned along the way is anything that is coming down the pipe.
00:16:38 Speaker 3
Mine like that open communication is is very important, right? There should not ever be surprises. The audit Committee is looking to us to help them understand. How are we correlating strategy? What does this look like from a risk or thematic perspective, helping them with what questions should they ask in the boardroom or the audit committee?
00:16:58 Speaker 3
Meeting what are the the key things that we're hearing that maybe they don't have a pulse on and and really expanding on those things to help them kind of see what we're seeing. So I think it goes back to the relationship, it goes back to the healthy dialogue and you know, I have regular monthly connections, but.
00:17:15 Speaker 3
Couple weeks ago there was something that came up and had to pick up the phone and call right and having that relationship and and having those healthy discussions allows for.
00:17:23 Speaker 2
That I'll tell another aspect of communication. You count talked about the the one-on-one and the back and forth, but a lot of a lot of the things that I hear from other internal auditors in the dialogue on report writing, you know and submitting a report to the Audit Committee.
00:17:37 Speaker 2
You know where there's a.
00:17:38 Speaker 2
Big push for more visuals, more mapping, you know, more concise. Is that something that you've had to?
00:17:45 Speaker 3
Deal with as well. It is so we've we've streamlined our audit committee reporting quite a bit. We've streamlined our audit reports quite a bit. So our audit reports we actually don't provide to the audit committee what we do provide. So we have a.
00:17:59 Speaker 3
One to two page audit report, so there is.
00:18:01 Speaker 3
Timelines and what we do provide is inter appendix. We list out all the audits we did from the last meeting or since the last meeting and then we include the opinion that we had. We have 4 different types of audit opinions. So effective some improvement needed major improvement needed and unsatisfactory. If we have any audit reports in those last two categories.
00:18:24 Speaker 3
Those are the ones that we provide to the audit committee. We actually don't do it though, in the form of here's our report. We do it in A1 pager that shows what we did, what were the themes that we found and then management actually is required to come and talk about what are they going to do to remediate this and focusing specifically on who's going to do it, what are they going to do and what are they going to do it.
00:18:45 Speaker 2
OK, Aaron, thanks for joining me. Today is a fantastic discussion. I hope our listeners get a lot out of it. Thank.
00:18:52 Speaker 3
You for your time. Absolutely. Thank you.
00:18:56 Speaker 1
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00:19:16 Speaker 1
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