Interview: Anthony J Pugliese - President of IIA Global

“Advocacy”, “education”, “value” and “collaboration” pepper a conversation with Anthony Pugliese, the new president and CEO of IIA Global. They are clearly issues that he feels passionate about and he brings with him experience tackling them in his previous leadership roles. Now at the helm of IIA Global, which has 200,000 members worldwide, 156 chapters and 112 affiliates (including the Chartered IIA) in nearly 200 countries and territories, he relishes the challenges of advancing internal auditing and attracting new recruits from non-traditional backgrounds.

His own experience is not unusual. He qualified first as an accountant, then eventually led an internal audit team at the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA) on his way to becoming CEO of the California Society of CPAs. He is well aware of the need to make internal audit more visible and widely understood by those outside the profession. He is also keen to make the views and skills of internal auditors more influential by engaging with a wider variety of lawmakers, regulators and other authorities.

A month into his role at IIA Global, he says that it already feels “natural”, but he is clearly excited by the opportunities. “There is so much happening in the profession at the moment. We need to evolve our skills sets and address lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, we have to redefine our strategic planning processes, and we need to address new risks if we are to improve the value we add to businesses,” he says. 

Most key issues he highlights apply to jurisdictions globally. He is keen to attract greater numbers of students into the profession, especially those from diverse backgrounds, and to improve equality and inclusion in internal auditing. He also wants to encourage internal auditors to raise their skills by better understanding, and using more, technology in their jobs.

“Our plans need to be based on practical tools as well as an overarching strategy,” he explains. “We can say we want to make the profession more diverse and inclusive, but we have to provide practical tools to make this happen.”

“We also need to address any concerns that technology threatens our role,” he adds. “I think it enhances it, but we must understand how to use it and the risks associated with, for example, blockchain, built-in bias in algorithms and artificial intelligence. We need to explain how technology can elevate our position, because internal audit is in a unique position to tell management how technology affects the overall business. We need to ask how we can apply technological developments ourselves as well as advising others about its effects.”

This is partly why he wants to attract people with different professional backgrounds into internal auditing. More diverse recruiting, he says, could lead to more chief audit executives (CAEs) with experience as, say, data scientists or in behavioural science in the future.

“We need to tell people why a move into internal audit is an exciting opportunity. It’s a rapidly changing environment where you can assimilate many skills and gain an overview of the entire business as well as responsibility and exposure to senior management early in your career. We need far better awareness about how wonderful it is to be an internal auditor,” he says.

No better time

And, he adds, there is no better time to be in internal audit:“The rate of change at the moment is phenomenal.” For a start, environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) concerns are rising rapidly up the corporate and international agenda. “We have to be there helping organisations to understand what this means and how to prepare for, and get ahead of, inevitable changes,” he says. “We not only need to help organisations avoid fines and ensure they are compliant, but we need to show boards how much value we can add to them here and promote more of what we can do.”

Investors, too, are increasingly asking for assurance that organisations are equitable and inclusive. This is opening up new opportunities for internal auditors, but it also carries the risk that, if internal audit does not step forward, another body will move in and fill the gap, he warns.

Pull together

A rapidly evolving market creates more need for advocacy, and Pugliese is keen for the global institute to play a strong role in publicising internal audit’s professional skills and remit, especially in areas such as ESG and diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I). He sees this as involving closer collaboration between national and regional institutes, as well as with other bodies, to increase recognition of internal audit’s expertise in these areas.

“We need to look for more opportunities to partner with other global organisations, such as the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) and the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), but also develop new relationships with colleges and universities around the world,” he says. “I don’t think we’ve maximised our associations with these yet, and we need to look further for other potential commercial and academic partners.”

By working more closely with academic institutions, Pugliese hopes to access more opportunities for increasing internal auditors’ skills and for publicising the profession to bright young talent seeking a rewarding career. At the same time, he urges internal auditors worldwide to think about their skills and how they showcase these to organisations. “We need to be better at recognising what we do and what we can offer and then communicate this more effectively,” he argues. “A quiet internal audit team is not good news.”

Organisations’ expectations of, and understanding of, internal audit varies widely across the world, he adds. “We can address this, in part, through greater outreach and a global message that communicates what a qualified, well-resourced internal audit team can do and what managers should be able to ask of it. Teams should take every opportunity to elevate the profession’s brand  and sell the value of internal audit to boards and audit committees.”

But this also requires auditors to adapt and evolve rapidly and to seize opportunities that arise – before someone else does. “A doctor who doesn’t understand or use technology and still hands out paper prescriptions is not one I would go to for a diagnosis,” Pugliese points out. “We have been through a period of rapid change, but change will never be done; the world won’t stop. Other professions are rebranding, and we need to think about what we offer and whether we are in the right place and can deal with the issues that are evolving.” 

This article was published in May  2021.