A selection of blog posts by James Paterson.
Not as straightforward as it seems – Adding value – Assurance maps
I ran a workshop in London over the past two days on the topic of Assurance Maps. Readers will not be surprised to learn that one of the key ingredients for a successful Assurance Map is to be clear about the added value that managers and senior managers will derive from the exercise (often board and audit committee members recognise that an assurance map will help “join up the jigsaw” of assurance efforts, and therefore tend to be supportive).
At face value this may seem to be a straightforward matter – if the board and audit committee can be persuaded support an assurance map, would it really matter if managers and senior managers were not that enthusiastic? In my experience working on assurance mapping efforts for the past 15 years, this is an important question, because there is a big difference between managers and senior managers tolerating an assurance map, but not seeing much benefit in what it gives; compared to them seeing it as a useful management tool that will help them manage aspects of their organisation. Clearly, in the latter case, you are much more likely to get ongoing interest in, and support for, further development of assurance maps from management; rather than them seeing an assurance map as a one-off activity that should be completed and then shelved.
What follows is a summary of our discussions. As you will see, the key message is the importance of being focused, specific and realistic about the added value goals being sought, and the need to think ahead, and manage proactively, how this added value might unfold (or not!). Continue Reading
IAS Conference 2018 – Internal Audit: Embracing the challenges of the future
I am looking forward to chairing the IAS Conference 2018 – Internal Audit: Embracing the challenges of the future taking place in November 2018.
The Internal Audit Service will hold its annual international conference on 6 November 2018. The Conference will focus on the global challenges affecting the Internal Audit (IA) profession and will be opened by the First Vice-President of the European Commission, Mr Frans Timmermans. In addition, Mr Richard Chambers, President and CEO of IIA Global will be a keynote speaker.
Full details about the conference can be found here, including registration options. The conference will also be live streamed.
When:
Tuesday 6 November 2018, 8.00 – 18.00 (CET)
Tuesday 6 November 2018, 8.00 – 18.00 (CET)
Where:
Alcide De Gasperi Room, Charlemagne Building
Alcide De Gasperi Room, Charlemagne Building
170, Rue de la Loi
1000 Brussels
Belgium
Chairing the EU Audit conference on Creativity & Innovation in Internal Auditing
I was very pleased to be involved with a team from the European Union Internal Audit Service to chair their 1 day workshop on Creativity & Innovation in Internal Auditing in October 2017.
The agenda was packed with interesting topics and great speakers. The main themes were:
- The history of Accounting and Auditing – with insights into what might happen in the future
- The impact of technology on business and internal audit – we covered; A, B, C, D: AI, BlockChain, Cyber and Data but surprisingly it emphasised the importance of not thinking technology should be even the main focus
- Auditing Culture and Auditing behaviour – emphasising the importance of looking at these areas
- Lean auditing and agile ways of working (which I also participated in) – highlighting that Value and Productivity needed to be an essential area of focus for Internal Audit teams going forward.
Slides are available through the following link:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/
The conference web stream is available through this link:
https://webcast.ec.europa.eu/
Hope some of this material is of interest.
Root Cause Analysis for Internal Auditors
I ran another Root Cause Analysis (RCA) workshop this week in London, with participants from the Financial services sector, Oil and Gas and Public sector. All those attending agreed that proper RCA was important to get to the heart of issues and to enable Internal Audit to provide insights, but none had done any formal training of any length on the topic and most had no explicit, consistent, RCA methodology defined.
We explored the root causes of how such an important topic could be relatively neglected, which includes its absence from current IIA standards, and came up with themes that I have heard on many other workshops, ranging from: “As auditors we have a natural instinct about root causes” to “There is limited time during assignments to do a proper RCA” to “Robust RCA would highlight quite sensitive matters and put us into conflict with management”. Continue Reading
IIA UK Leaders Conference – Discussion On Independence
Chaired a very interesting panel discussion on internal audit independence for the IIA UK Leaders Conference in London in March 2017.
I have written up the key points in an article that includes some great advice, but also looks at the real world challenges and dilemmas that internal auditors face to balance “value add” and being a “trusted advisor” with independence. It also includes the results from two polls outlining the views of the audience of heads of internal audit on the extent of these pressures. The article concludes with some specific ways heads of audit might test their independence, but builds most welcomed to me on jcp@RiskAI.co.uk.
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James had conversations with us and read through our existing methodology documentation, before proposing an agenda and associated materials for a workshop. We had a very enjoyable and energising time, and James’ experience and facilitation style helped us to identify a raft of efficiency ideas, two of which we prioritised and worked on in more detail at the workshop itself.
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James has been excellent in terms of helping me to focus on key themes and messaging specific to my organisation, whilst ensuring that the general assurance strategy we have drawn up reflects best practice. I have enjoyed our sessions together, and I think a large part of that is the way James has not imposed a standard one size fits all approach, rather working with me to really understand our business and drawing on my knowledge to shape a suitable risk, audit and assurance strategy. This has all been done within a fairly demanding timeframe so I have appreciated James’ flexibility in working around my day to day business demands. Consequently I feel the output is very much tailored to our business, and represents an efficient and effective investment of time and money.
I look forward to working with James in the future and would certainly recommend him for any work of this nature given the experience that I have had.
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