Influence and impact are central to internal audit performance. Without these, internal auditors cannot achieve their primary purpose of supporting their organisation to achieve its goals.
But evaluating, recording and communicating your team’s success in these areas is not always straightforward. Simply recording good work completed does not indicate whether it has influenced actions or had any significant impact.
This matters.
First, lack of impact limits your internal audit team’s success. You need to know if, and where, you lack impact to change this. As internal auditors transition to being trusted advisors, ensuring your work has genuine impact and influence becomes ever more vital.
Second, evaluating your success in this area is now a formal requirement in the Global Internal Audit Standards (GIAS).
Standard 12.2, Performance Measurement states:
“The chief audit executive must develop objectives to evaluate the internal audit function’s performance. The chief audit executive must consider the input and expectations of the board and senior management when developing the performance objectives. The chief audit executive must develop a performance measurement methodology to assess progress toward achieving the function’s objectives and to promote the continuous improvement of the internal audit function.”
And third, in many organisations, AI is providing senior management with information at their fingertips. If internal auditors cannot add value using their critical thinking, evidence-based opinions and judgment – and ensure that this is listened to and makes a difference – internal audit will lose its value.
While the need to evaluate the internal audit function’s impact has increased, so have the tools to support this. AI is a two-edged sword. Automation and technology enable internal audit to enhance its impact and influence, points out John Chesshire, who leads the Chartered IIA’s.
This course is designed to help those who are not currently measuring their impact sufficiently to start – and it will also encourage those who have not refreshed how they achieve this to learn from current best practice.
“It comes back to how we add value,” Chesshire says. “There is a continuum from the Audit Charter, through the Audit Strategy to proving how we have delivered the value the organisation needs.”
The GIAS are pushing any internal audit teams still focusing on being assurance providers to move towards being trusted advisors, Chesshire adds. It’s about raising the bar for all internal audit functions.
“It’s easy to end up measuring and reporting things that are easy to measure, not things that are important,” he says. “There are qualitative and quantitative measures for even the more intangible performance elements.”
And you don’t need to invest in expensive technology. Dashboards that enable you to slice and dice data and view current performance measures in real time are important, but much can be done with common tools such as SharePoint, Excel and PowerBI. “Most teams don’t use every aspect of standard tech tools,” Chesshire points out.
Poor data should not be a limiting factor, since the data supporting internal audit performance measures should be recorded and maintained by internal audit.
“The intention is to help internal audit teams improve and progress what they are currently doing to measure impact,” Chesshire explains. Many teams are currently measuring and monitoring too many things, not too few, he adds. “There’s little point measuring numbers of, for example, days spent in training, if you don’t know the impact this has had.”
Ultimately, internal audit exists to tell the board and the Audit Committee what they need to know as well as what they want to know. However, if an Audit Committee has low expectations, or is out of date about what it should expect from internal audit, it may need some education.
“We need the Audit Committee to be demanding customers who hold us to account,” Chesshire explains. “We can’t be an effective cornerstone of good governance if we’re not being held to account. A good internal audit team will always be pushing to do more, even if the Audit Committee doesn’t ask for it.”
Influencing and impact may therefore start with increasing expectations, but you then need to be able to meet these.
Some people who attend are already doing robust performance and impact measurement but want to benchmark their work and find out how to progress further. Others are at an earlier stage in their journey. It is equally suitable for Chief Audit Executives, senior internal auditors or team members who have been asked to focus on quality assurance and measuring results.
Not only will attendees get a good overview of best practice and practical steps to improve their own position, but they will also be able to discuss their questions, concerns and share experiences.
They will learn how leading teams are developing and how technology can support them. Break-out sessions will encourage them to discuss their KPIs and how these work (or don’t work) and to hear about other teams’ practices.
Common questions include what is the “right” number of KPIs and what are the “best” metrics, Chesshire says. He promises that all attendees will leave with a reading list for further information and the latest thinking around these subjects as well as what they have discussed with each other.
I want everyone who attends to leave this course with the confidence to enhance the things they need to improve, he concludes. “If they’re not sure, they should be brave about piloting something new. It doesn’t have to be perfect from day one.”
This highly interactive course will look at the typical performance measures and ask if they are adding any value. It will help you assess your performance measures and offer you a range of ideas to help you rethink and redesign your team’s approach and better meet stakeholder expectations.
