All Things Internal Audit: Fraud Psychology in Internal Audit

00:00:02 The IIA

The Institute of Internal Auditors presents all things internal audit in this episode, Eric Wilson talks with Doctor Kelly Richmond Pope about the psychology behind fraud, why ordinary people commit unethical acts, and how trust, pressure and culture shape fraud risk they discuss accidental versus intentional.

00:00:22 The IIA

Perpetrators cognitive blind spots, whistleblowing challenges and what auditors can do to better detect and prevent fraud.

00:00:32 Eric Wilson

So I figured we could just jump in. I'm always curious when I meet somebody like yourself, who is a true expert in a in a particular area.

00:00:41 Eric Wilson

What is it that got you into this field? What was the spark that drew you into it and catch you where you're at and and took you to the level where you really with this expertise?

00:00:51 Kelly Richmond Pope

My spark was my students years ago. I had a student that did a paper on forensic accounting and I read this paper and I was unfamiliar with the area at the time. This was a long time ago and I realized that it was this field that was a combination of.

00:01:11 Kelly Richmond Pope

Financial accounting, auditing, criminology, a little bit of attacks.

00:01:18 Kelly Richmond Pope

A little bit of sociology, some psychology, and a dash of nosiness. If you're nosy and still this, the field spoke to me just from a theoretical foundation. I just wanted to learn more. And at this time, this was the beginning of when American greed started to come on TV. And so any of our listeners.

00:01:38 Kelly Richmond Pope

I'm sure you have watched American greed episode here and there over.

00:01:42 Kelly Richmond Pope

Years, but what always sort of frustrated me at the beginning of American greed when it first started was you never heard from the perpetrators. You always heard from people talking about them. And I always felt like there's another story there like, you know, when someone tells something third hand or second hand, some of the details get lost.

00:02:03 Kelly Richmond Pope

And some of the explanations get skewed, so I always wanted to talk to the person that they actually committed the crime.

00:02:10 Kelly Richmond Pope

And so I started going around the country and doing on camera interviews with white collar felons, whistleblowers and victims of fraud. But specifically, we're talking about the blowers with perpetrators. And as I was doing the interviews, I realized how normal they were, how how they were just involved in.

00:02:30 Kelly Richmond Pope

Regular business decisions, regular business meetings and someone said something that seemed a little.

00:02:38 Kelly Richmond Pope

Questionable and that happens to all of us.

00:02:40 Kelly Richmond Pope

So I realized then that these stories are.

00:02:44 Kelly Richmond Pope

Powerful and they are relatable and they should be shared. So that was the spark of the relatability and really trying to understand the humanity in these situations because I don't. We might not admit it. An error you probably you've had a long career too. You have said in a meeting.

00:03:06 Kelly Richmond Pope

Once or twice, where the things that people were talking about were like.

00:03:11 Kelly Richmond Pope

That might be a little we might not want to do that and and it's not that it's illegal, but when you think about legality and ethicality, those are very different things. And so that was the spark of me just realizing that the situations that they're in are this are the high pressure situations situations many executives are in and let's share these stories. And so let's start talking about it.

00:03:33 Eric Wilson

That background is is great because as I I got your book and I started look.

00:03:37 Eric Wilson

Through and one of the things that I really appreciated was you, you take this approach of, hey, let's just forget this idea of the stereotypical con con artist that you see in the movies and everything else. You know, these are your neighbors, your coworkers. It's you in the wrong situation or under the wrong circumstances. And so when you think about from a psychological perspective and.

00:03:57 Eric Wilson

With all the work that you've done.

00:03:59 Eric Wilson

Most of the time I would say almost all the time these are employees who didn't necessarily start out with the idea of, hey, I'm going to go in this company and I'm going to do fraud and I'm sure that does happen on occasion, but typically it's a trustworthy employee who over time converts into committing fraud. What is the driver? What is the psychology behind making that transition? What have you seen as being what, what really causes that to happen?

00:04:20 Eric Wilson

Somebody.

00:04:21 Kelly Richmond Pope

I want to give the the disclaimer. I am not a psychologist, I'm a CPA. I'm a CFEI am not a psychologist, I'm just a doozy person. You know that likes to just dig and dig and dig and dig and dig and ask questions. I feel like I'm like the Oprah of of fraud. Maybe that.

00:04:24 Eric Wilson

Absolute.

00:04:36 Kelly Richmond Pope

Maybe that's a?

00:04:36 Kelly Richmond Pope

Good name, but to go back to your question.

00:04:39 Kelly Richmond Pope

When I think about.

00:04:41 Kelly Richmond Pope

The psychology I wanna talk about. Did you ever see Breaking Bad on AMC? OK. And so remember the main character, the teacher, Mr. White.

00:04:48 Eric Wilson

Absolutely.

00:04:54

M.

00:04:55 Kelly Richmond Pope

If you think about his situation.

00:04:58 Kelly Richmond Pope

He thought that he had a terminal illness. He thought that his family was going to be left in ruins when he passed away and he was a chemistry teacher. And so he felt as though his back was against the wall. What can I do to earn money quickly?

00:04:59

Though.

00:05:18 Kelly Richmond Pope

And a lot.

00:05:19 Kelly Richmond Pope

Of it. And so it was. The pressure of just life adulting as we like to say, but just the pressure of feeling like I have a need. And I have an immediate need. How can I feel it fast? And so I think that although we're talking about a show, I think that is representative of what happens in life.

00:05:40 Kelly Richmond Pope

As an adult, whether you have experienced job loss, whether you've experienced an unexpected pregnancy, we know that's a blessing. But unexpected pregnancy, unexpected illness. You know, all of these pressures that happen.

00:05:55 Kelly Richmond Pope

And you've got to figure out how can I get money fast. And so I think it's the pressure of just all the face pressures. But many of us don't have a family member that we can borrow $40,000 for from or, you know, like, you think about it as you get older, the pressures get far more complex.

00:06:17 Kelly Richmond Pope

And when you experience one getting out of it takes layers. And so I think sometimes.

00:06:23 Kelly Richmond Pope

People, they, they look around and they realize how can I get fast cash? What do I have access to? What do I have control over? And oftentimes it's their companies because you know you you think about it. There are lots of companies that are that have poor internal controls that might not be regulated well.

00:06:43 Kelly Richmond Pope

Uh, and it it it's not that hard to do. And so it happens. And you think you're going to?

00:06:47 Kelly Richmond Pope

Pay it back.

00:06:48 Eric Wilson

So I think it's pressure and you know the other thing that was really interesting, one of the stories that you related in your book is there's also the other side of it.

00:06:58 Eric Wilson

Where people who.

00:06:59 Eric Wilson

Have everything in life and they don't have to worry a thing. And there were at least one example that I saw where.

00:07:05 Eric Wilson

The person did it just because he could, because I think he had that social pressure of I don't have struggles. I see everybody else doing it, so I'm going to go do this because really, I've never really had to worry about anything. So here's something that I can just do that, you know, might be exciting, might be interesting. So it was just really fascinating to read how everything frames down. So there is some.

00:07:24 Eric Wilson

Kind of pressure.

00:07:25 Eric Wilson

That forces people into these situations and I and I appreciate.

00:07:28 Eric Wilson

You really clarifying that out for us.

00:07:31 Kelly Richmond Pope

I want to add Eric. I think there that what you just touched upon is something interesting too because you talk about the person that really doesn't have to do it and there's something to be said for that adrenaline rush of getting away with something. I mean, I went skydiving years ago. I don't know why I went skydiving.

00:07:49 Kelly Richmond Pope

I mean, it's the most ridiculous, dangerous thing to do, to say I'm going to jump out of a plane and hope that the parachute opens. But the feeling of once your feet hit the ground and you did it, you're then and you have the bragging right.

00:08:02 Kelly Richmond Pope

That island skydiving, I think there is a psychology there too, that you're Speaking of and that that's just the the thrill of trying and pulling, pulling a fast one over, some over someone's eyes and that that is fulfilling for some people too.

00:08:20 Eric Wilson

So you describe in your book and and different talks you've done and papers you've written that it's intentional, it's accidental or it's it's righteous frauds.

00:08:29 Eric Wilson

If you had to talk to a group of voters to say, hey, here's going to be the one that is going to be the most challenging for you to identify, is there one within that group? OK? And and if so, which one?

00:08:40 Kelly Richmond Pope

I think the UM, accidental perpetrator is the one that the one that could be any of us, because when the way I talk about it, the intentional perpetrators are more like a a con artist mentality. So a lot of us don't identify with that. We don't look in an organization, see what the weaknesses are and then try to exploit it for personal gain most of.

00:09:00 Kelly Richmond Pope

Us don't relate to that.

00:09:01 Kelly Richmond Pope

But I think most of us can relate to the situation of.

00:09:06 Kelly Richmond Pope

My supervisor, my controller, my CEO, my CFO asking me to do something and I don't push back. I don't ask any questions. I want to be a part of the team. I want to get a good rating. So I just do it. I might not.

00:09:18 Kelly Richmond Pope

Feel that great.

00:09:18 Kelly Richmond Pope

About it, but I just do it. That is the profile I think of the high performing.

00:09:26 Kelly Richmond Pope

Or even mid performing employee.

00:09:28 Kelly Richmond Pope

And so that person is amongst all of our teams. And so how to help support that person I think is challenging.

00:09:36 Kelly Richmond Pope

Because they want to do good, but they want to do good. They want to be pleasing. So those people that have the pleasing personalities which most of us do, we're trusting, we're pleasing. So I think the accidental perpetrator is the one that is the most identifiable and the most likely to happen. And you don't realize it's happen.

00:09:58 Kelly Richmond Pope

Into you, righteous perpetrators are a little bit more senior in an organization and so sometimes they feel like the rules don't necessarily apply to them. I'm I would say that they are the next category. Accidental would be first, righteous perpetrators would be second and then intentional perpetrators would be third in terms of its frequency amongst.

00:10:18 Kelly Richmond Pope

Seat.

00:10:19 Eric Wilson

Obviously, we all have cognitive biases and blind spots with.

00:10:22 Eric Wilson

What we do on a day-to-day.

00:10:24 Eric Wilson

These days, you know longer. You're in an organization, the more comfortable you get to be around people and certain things just become normal, you know, maybe they're not normal to other people. So you've, I'm sure gone into organizations and look from the outside. And and I've had this experience too, where I'll go in and I'll talk to a group of otters and I'll say, how do we miss this? But I'm coming in from the outside.

00:10:44 Eric Wilson

So it's easy for me to see it with somebody who's in an organization might not see something as as apparently. So when you think about cognitive biases and blind spots, what's the most common cause of auditors overlooking fraud risk, even when the warning signs are there?

00:10:58 Kelly Richmond Pope

Trust one simple word. Trust I mean and. And you think about it. Trust is a very powerful thing, because what trust allows us to do is.

00:11:08

Just want to let.

00:11:09 Kelly Richmond Pope

Somebody else do an aspect of the job that we're supposed to do. So when you think about the role of an auditor or an internal auditor, it's a tough job to go in and pass judgment or opine on things, especially if the internal audit role, because the people and the the processes that you are offering an opinion about.

00:11:29 Kelly Richmond Pope

Are overseen by people you know, so you're you're within this organization, but yet you have to have this independent and unbiased opinion of what you're seeing. And that's really, really hard. So if anybody walks in and can take some of that burden away from you because you trust them, that is a very powerful emotion.

00:11:51 Kelly Richmond Pope

And I think that the idea of.

00:11:52 Kelly Richmond Pope

Trust is what what allows us to miss things. You know, we think that trust is sometimes being insensitive or inappropriate behavior. For example, if you told me if I asked you, Eric, how much do you make a year? And you said I'm just gonna use.

00:12:11 Kelly Richmond Pope

Them $10,000.

00:12:13 Kelly Richmond Pope

And I said, well, show me an invoice. I'm just asking you for verification, but to some people that might be offensive, but yet I'm just asking for verification. And so trust is this really interesting dynamic because.

00:12:29 Kelly Richmond Pope

If you don't show it, you're so concerned about the how the other party might might react to you, but it's the it's the introduction of it that allows you to have all these blonde spots and not pay attention to the things that are right in front of your face. When I directed and produced all the Queen's horses.

00:12:48 Kelly Richmond Pope

Which is my documentary about the largest municipal fraud in U.S. history.

00:12:53 Kelly Richmond Pope

The perpetrator of my documentary was a woman by the name of Rita Crundwell. Well Rita Crundwell embezzled over $53.7 million / 20 years now. Dixon is this super small town, probably about 16,000 people's annual budget between 6 and $8 million. If your city controller owns 400.

00:13:13 Kelly Richmond Pope

Courses that might start making you wonder how like where are you getting this money from? How if your city comes roller takes almost four months out off, off a year. She's not in the office, you might wonder, well, how is she living if she's taking all this time off? Like, where's the money coming from? But your trust?

00:13:34 Kelly Richmond Pope

In her is what allowed so many people to just not pay attention to all the red flags and blind spots are right in front of them. So I think trust is the is the is, the is the power word of the day.

00:13:46 Eric Wilson

There's a really another another interesting component that I want to run by you, and this is actually an.

00:13:51 Eric Wilson

Expert from your book, I hope you don't mind me.

00:13:52 Eric Wilson

Doing it related to this exact situation started this part with saying. I'm pretty sure Rita Crumwell hates me. I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect it's true. I understand it. I a mere accounting professor exposed her crimes to an international audience. I've made a career out of her. If I were her, I'd hate me too. That's a powerful thing to say. And when you think about internal auditors who sit within an organization.

00:14:15 Eric Wilson

And I gotta sit next to this person for the next 20 years, maybe.

00:14:18 Eric Wilson

I don't necessarily want them hating me. And what if I'm going down this road and it turns out to be wrong, but now I've burned bridges and everything else, so that's another, I think, powerful component of you have to find that balance of yes, this person might hate me, but also I have to figure out what they're doing and do it in a way that is most.

00:14:34 Kelly Richmond Pope

Appropriate for the organization. I think what we underestimate is the tough role.

00:14:39 Kelly Richmond Pope

Of an internal auditor. It is a hard job to be.

00:14:43 Kelly Richmond Pope

Inside of an organization and to offer an independent view of that organization and have to offer opinions, suggestions, improvements on people that you work alongside of, that's not easy. And I I don't think we talked about it enough as to how challenging and important the role is, but it's hard.

00:15:03 Kelly Richmond Pope

It's very hard, I'm sure in your career you've had to offer an opinion, an unpopular opinion, maybe a a peer, or someone that you might not want to offer opinion about, but you had to because that's.

00:15:16 Kelly Richmond Pope

Role and it puts you in a very, very uncomfortable situation. But I think the more that people understand the role and the importance of the internal audit function, the more respect they can have for it and understand it is just the job, it is just, it's almost like a police officer, like, you know, a police officer when you need them, you want them there, you know, like you want them to do their job.

00:15:38 Kelly Richmond Pope

You want them to protect and serve. You want them there. It's sort of the same thing with an internal auditors. I think we just have to elevate and respect the role so that everybody understands that this person is here to make our entire organization safe.

00:15:52 Eric Wilson

Absolutely. And I think through with auditors.

00:15:55 Eric Wilson

We have to accept the fact that there's no shame in saying, hey, this is getting to a point or this is a situation where maybe we need to bring a third party to help us out, who's unbiased to all this, because that does happen. And sometimes, you know, just start digging into things. Some of these things get pretty complex and pretty deep, and you start getting a lot of pressure within the organization and bringing that third party can really.

00:16:16 Eric Wilson

With that, if you think about different environments that you've seen, is there any particular major clues to you that when you start to look at an organization, just indicate that potentially the culture is shifting towards one that may be 1 where fraud can occur or one that you know you just go in and say oh?

00:16:34 Eric Wilson

There's definitely some here.

00:16:36 Eric Wilson

I mean really started looking yet, but I would suspect that there there's probably something going.

00:16:40 Kelly Richmond Pope

I think organizations that have no formal fraud training, fraud, ethics training and engaging and impactful training, not just did you sign the code of conduct, not just. Did you watch the online video, but something? Someone that can come in, create that safe space and really.

00:17:01 Kelly Richmond Pope

Force you to be self reflective and sometimes doing that is using scenario based high pressure immersive cases so that people can do that more because we don't have enough practice on making judgment calls and so that's to me why I just signing a code of conduct.

00:17:20 Kelly Richmond Pope

Or just reading a code isn't helpful because you haven't given a person the opportunity to think through a situation and you really do need to do that. I think an organization that is void of training void of that ethics and fraud training and probably quarterly, not just annually, would be.

00:17:39 Kelly Richmond Pope

A first sign.

00:17:40 Kelly Richmond Pope

So yeah, that's what I would say is one of the first, I wouldn't say a red flag, but a flag something you want to pay attention to.

00:17:47 Eric Wilson

Indicator that maybe there's something broader happening.

00:17:51 Eric Wilson

One of the things that I noticed in my career is that fraudsters are typically people who are likable, they're highly competent, they can use charm as a, as a tool, even talked about in your book. One example was a fellow professor at DePaul who, you know, you and I appreciate you saying that. You said that this person was my friend.

00:18:10 Eric Wilson

And I would still consider him to be a friend and somebody who I like. But he did this thing that I couldn't believe he did. And part of that is because of you knew him. You knew his family, knew everything else.

00:18:20 Eric Wilson

So in terms of using that, how can auditors remain objective without becoming overly skeptical, skeptical of everybody and everything that's going on within organization?

00:18:30 Kelly Richmond Pope

That's a tough one and and this might not sound like a very popular suggestion, but I think auditors to the best of their ability.

00:18:40 Kelly Richmond Pope

These they really need to manage the kinds of relationships they have within an organization because you don't want to get too close to the people that you ultimately have to review. If you can maintain this is work. This is not my personal life. My personal life is out here. These are my friends because I at some point might need to evaluate.

00:19:01 Kelly Richmond Pope

Negatively, someone here, probably creating those barriers, is is the easier way to go.

00:19:07 Eric Wilson

I think that's that's really helpful and you know it's a tough thing to do because.

00:19:10 Eric Wilson

On one hand, you have to build relationships as an auditor because you don't want people to run when they see you, but on the other hand, you have to keep in mind the fact that, to your point it someday you may be having to make some judgment calls on a particular individual department that are really not going to be.

00:19:25 Kelly Richmond Pope

Comfortable so you can be strategic about how you manage those relationships. I mean I think.

00:19:30 Kelly Richmond Pope

Going out to lunch and talking you very high level about details.

00:19:34 Kelly Richmond Pope

It's fine, but you know there are a lot deeper relationships that can often form in organizations where employees are traveling together. You're going to their birthday parties and you, you end up. And so to me, if you are in the internal audit function role or the external auditors are a little bit different, but internal audit function role, it's very hard to maintain.

00:19:56 Kelly Richmond Pope

Those kind of or those kinds of relationships internally and do your job objectively. So I think you really have to manage how you create friendships, how you create those work relationships, especially for people that you have to.

00:20:12 Kelly Richmond Pope

At some point, observed within your own organization.

00:20:16 Eric Wilson

Auditors, we're doing interviews all the time. We're doing walkthroughs for socks. We're doing day-to-day interactions with different departments, different individuals. What red flags should we be looking out for?

00:20:27 Kelly Richmond Pope

This is going to be contextual to the the situation, but I think that when people can't answer basic questions that you know they should know, the answer to that should be a red flag.

00:20:37 Kelly Richmond Pope

I mean, I'm going off of past experiences I've had with interviews that I've done with people that have been in these situations, people that have portal fraud and the situation, and it's like the person that's asking the questions. Sometimes it's dancing around the question and so they don't want it. They don't want to attack it.

00:20:59 Kelly Richmond Pope

UM head on and they need to. So I think though the inability to answer basic questions, the inability to produce reports that should be readily available, the inability to have audited financial statements when you know they should be audited if given the size of the organization so.

00:21:19 Kelly Richmond Pope

There are things that are they're they're not hidden. It's just we feel uncomfortable addressing them because most of us don't like confrontation.

00:21:29 Kelly Richmond Pope

We don't. We don't feel like I'm gonna go in and just keep asking this person's question over and over and over and over again. We don't wanna be that person. So we don't do it. So I think it's just those basic obvious things that we don't the that basic answer cannot be produced.

00:21:47 Eric Wilson

So one of the most obvious ones that I've seen.

00:21:49 Eric Wilson

In my career.

00:21:50 Eric Wilson

Is what I call and I've seen a couple of times the narcissist nap. I'm sure that is not an official thing. Again, same thing I'm not.

00:21:57 Eric Wilson

Like I'll just, but it's somebody who, you know will sit there and talk, you know, victim and down and sad and distraught and why everything, you know, can't happen the way it's supposed to until you push them to a point and then all of a sudden they snap and they become a bulldog and they like going for the throat. That's a pretty obvious one. But the other thing that I've noticed, too, and you may have seen this is somebody will mess up and.

00:22:17 Eric Wilson

Yeah, just have a little misstep on an answer, but rather than correcting which normal people would do if they weren't worried about it, they try to keep stacking more information on that little misstep. And you just sit there and you're like, whoa, if you would just fix this 10 steps ago in your answer, we wouldn't be doing this, but now I'm seriously sitting here going. Why? Why are we having to do this song?

00:22:38 Eric Wilson

And I think what you're trying to get to is it's really a gut feeling a lot of times you're going to build where you're going. This doesn't make sense. What this person just saying just doesn't make sense to me and just keep digging and digging and digging. So appreciate that.

00:22:50 Kelly Richmond Pope

I'm going to say something that might not be popular on our on our conversation today, but you use the word narcissist and I'll tell you this and this is just sort of Kelly's own personal belief is.

00:23:02 Kelly Richmond Pope

Most successful people that are in corporate America and that and this is from mid level on up have some level of narcissism in order to function.

00:23:13 Eric Wilson

Yep, that's fair.

00:23:14 Kelly Richmond Pope

You know, now there can be varying degrees of it, but most of us have some level of narcissism for us to be able to function and be competitive on a team or.

00:23:24 Kelly Richmond Pope

Like we have.

00:23:25 Kelly Richmond Pope

To be so you know, I don't know that it is the negative word that it has come to be, because I think we all have.

00:23:26 Eric Wilson

Ask.

00:23:34 Kelly Richmond Pope

Traits of narcissism and and because it's the only way we can really.

00:23:37 Kelly Richmond Pope

Function.

00:23:38 Eric Wilson

No, I agree. I think. And just like a lot of things, too much of a good thing can become really bad and and you start to see that at least in my experience when you do fraud investigations, there are the people who have narcissism to the extreme and then it really starts to come out when you pressure them and it it gets pretty interesting. So. So you've worked a lot with whistleblowers, that is.

00:23:59 Eric Wilson

You know, it's just it's easy for everybody from the outside when something goes bad to go. Why didn't everybody just come up and say something about this? Like, of course, you know, if I was in that situation, I would go say something. But in reality, it's really easy to say that. And it's a it's a lot harder to actually do it. So you haven't worked with whistleblowers and study them. What is the psychological? What are some of the psychological barriers that keep employees from speaking up, and how can we as authors?

00:24:21 Eric Wilson

How people get past that?

00:24:23 Kelly Richmond Pope

Being a whistleblower is tough. I mean you you were taking the weight.

00:24:26 Kelly Richmond Pope

Of the world.

00:24:27 Kelly Richmond Pope

On your shoulders. And it is despite what you might be saying, could be true. The truth is often distracted by so many other factors, and I think it's hard being a what.

00:24:42 Kelly Richmond Pope

Blower and I think we have to be very honest and upfront with that because it's probably easier to stay silent and go find another job than it is to fight. And again, going back to what we talked about earlier, we're not, we're not natural confrontational people like you know we so calling something out that that.

00:25:02 Kelly Richmond Pope

Everybody else thinks one thing and you think another. That's a hard thing to do. And so I think the reason why people say silent is because of isolation, reputational damage. It's hard. They're very few whistleblowers that I've ever seen that have had a positive Rd.

00:25:21 Kelly Richmond Pope

And so in my documentary, Catherine Swanson was the whistleblower who who exposed Rita Crundwell's fraud. And perhaps she's might want May maybe a sample of one because.

00:25:33 Kelly Richmond Pope

Maybe because it was a governmental entity she was saving people taxpayer dollars. Nobody really lost their jobs. But you know, when you think about her situation hadn't been a publicly traded company and there was a reputational damage that the company experienced, maybe they have. There were layoffs as a result of that. Like you coming forward.

00:25:53 Kelly Richmond Pope

As such a domino effect that people can easily talk.

00:25:57 Kelly Richmond Pope

Themselves out of it.

00:25:59 Eric Wilson

At every auditor out there adopted 1 mindset shifts about human behavior. What shift do you think would be most important in their ability to detect and prevent?

00:26:11 Kelly Richmond Pope

Trust no one.

00:26:13 Kelly Richmond Pope

Fair enough. Try another one. That's fair. Trust no one and also be self reflective of your own self. Like think about if you've never been tested, you also may not know how you would respond, but just having this this mindset that you can trust nothing will probably be serve you well if you're an.

00:26:15 Eric Wilson

Clear.

00:26:31 Eric Wilson

Auditor, that's fair and I think.

00:26:33 Eric Wilson

You know, one thing that I see in my career is that auditors are not always the best at introspection.

00:26:37 Eric Wilson

And so to your point, trust no one, including yourself, make sure you're checking yourself and for you know, the audit teams out there getting the quality assurance, reviews and everything else. I will point out that the CIA has a fraud framework that they put out last year that you can find the website that's spectacular. And the nice thing about it is that it's a guidance document that any audit department can use.

00:26:58 Eric Wilson

And it takes out that bias of what do I want to do in my department? Because the IA is just saying, here's what you should be doing. And here's how should be structured. So if you're if you're not going out there, that's trying to figure out how to do this, go check there first and then work backwards from there. But I really enjoy the conversation, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.

00:27:16 Kelly Richmond Pope

Thanks for having me. Eric was wonderful chatting.

00:27:18 Kelly Richmond Pope

With you. Same here.

00:27:21 The IIA

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00:27:41 The IIA

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