Bridging Internal Audit Plan Gaps
Do you know what you don’t know? The unknown unknowns can be a significant risk to a person and to an organization, and determining the unk unks can be a difficult task in and of itself. Internal Audit (IA) as a discipline continues to grow and evolve in many directions including information technology, fraud prevention, data handling and analysis, and new standards for these and other areas. The question is: do you have the expertise to address all of these areas?
Bridge IA Plan Gaps
With the current shortage of skilled auditors, the gap is growing, and it makes sense for organizations to leverage their existing internal auditors and improve their skills in order to bridge the IA Plan gaps. However, the gap is growing faster than organizations can onboard and train qualified staff. Existing staff only have so many hours in the day, and the pool of capable applicants is shrinking. What is a chief audit executive to do?
The age of specialization in knowledgeable workers has been in discussion for many years, and highlights two key concepts that are relevant to the skills gap:
- Expertise in a technical field allows for faster service delivery, and
- Having multiple experts to whom you can delegate can increase speed of results and effectiveness.
Now think about your internal audit organization and the skills of your existing staff. Are you prepared right now to handle the following?
- Sufficient knowledge and experience to evaluate the risk of fraud, and how it is managed by the organization.
- Experience auditing IT environments, and providing recommendations that result in effective change within the information technology segment.
- Confidence that you can begin a data analysis initiative to monitor the organization for risks, and identify red flags in the data to help the organization avoid problems.
- Skills and experience performing governance interviews with management to evaluate ethics, tone at the top, and provide recommendations that highlight potential cultural and/or oversight issues in the organization.
These considerations are important if an internal audit group wants to thrive and add value to the organization. The first step toward growth is to identify your strengths and then your weaknesses. It is by knowing where we are weak, so that we know what resources we need to bridge the gaps.
McKonly & Asbury’s (M&A) Internal Audit and Management Consulting group has the expertise to help you bridge the gaps. We have a proven track record of coming along side of our clients, and providing the knowledge transfer to build the required expertise to bridge the gaps.
Independence and Objectivity Gaps
M&A’s Internal Audit and Management Consulting group has experience to fill the gap left by Chief Audit Executives wearing multiple hats. With the increased emphasis on Compliance and Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), many organizations look to IA to assume responsibilities in these areas. This results in an independence and objectivity issue when it comes to fulfilling the IIA standard’s expectations in this area. There is also a continuing challenge to meet the independence and objectivity standards when it comes to preforming governance and business ethics audits.
For more information on our IA outsourcing and co-sourcing experience, contact Elaine Nissley, Principal, MBA, CISA, CCSA, CRMA, CRISC, PMP, ENissley@macpas.com.
