View from the top: Roots – Help young internal auditors to  thrive despite current storms

We need to look after and nurture young internal auditors. This is more important than ever at a time of talent shortages, global uncertainty, rapid change and multiple emerging challenges. They are the seedlings that we need to help grow strong roots to ensure the profession – and our organisations – thrive in future, and we need to provide them with a greenhouse to shelter them from the storms.

It feels like a very different time from when I joined the profession in the 1990s, when the world appeared to be going in a broadly positive direction. Relations between the US and Russia were thawing, the Berlin Wall had fallen, the EU was expanding, and China was a growing partner in global trade. Yes, my generation had to deal with a few financial missteps in the 1990s and the early years of the 21st century, but I believe most of us felt pretty optimistic about the future.

Now, I look at the 20-30 year olds in my team and feel they are facing huge challenges and disruption at work that rival or exceed anything we tackled at a similar age. Many of them finished education or started their careers during a global pandemic and are now trying to buy their first flat, get married and grow their careers in the midst of a war in Europe, increasing geopolitical tensions and soaring inflation and interest rates.

It feels as if we are asking a lot of our young cohort. Given that the internal audit profession itself is relatively young and has developed rapidly over the past 40 years, none of us can really claim to have a blueprint for dealing with the risks that are now emerging on all sides. But those who have already established deep roots have years of experience – and more resources – to draw on. We are in a good position to offer support. So we should be sympathetic to our young auditors, whose lives are being disrupted by a tsunami of uncertainty and anxiety.

Internal audit can offer an endlessly interesting and thought-provoking career, and provide auditors with skills and knowledge that will enable them to progress and work in a wide variety of sectors and jobs in future. We can help those now entering the profession to put down their own roots, which will not only give them security today, but also, through their work, help them to weather future storms.

This is why it is essential that chief audit executives nurture those joining the profession, whether this is via formal training and qualifications, or mentoring and exposure to opportunities and experiences. My aim is that everyone in my team will be able to look back and say “My CAE really helped me to build my career and to get to where I am now”. I want each team member to gain something useful that will matter for the rest of their life no matter what they go on to do.

Many of us who reach senior roles in internal audit can name somebody who encouraged or supported us early in our careers. We must remember that we are nurturing the professionals of the future – we need to equip them to lead and develop the profession to make the world better for them, not for us.

One part of this support is to provide stability and confidence at a time when so much is unstable and unpredictable. Experience tells us that people who are unsure about what is expected of them tend to underperform. Ensuring that job descriptions and responsibilities are clearly defined and understood, and that the team and its work are well-structured is critical.

This is not rocket science, but it makes a real difference. Having a handbook comprising all the basic information for your internal audit department, so that anybody joining the team has an immediate tangible reference point, can really help. In our handbook, for example, a new team member can look up the details of a specific process, and see what to do and the relevant IPPF Standard at a glance.

Stability also means ensuring that we are still covering the fundamentals and that our day-to-day audit work is operating at the optimum level. It’s easy to be distracted by rapid change, but to be innovative and relevant everyone in the team needs to understand their role and execute the basics consistently well.

This is as essential for the business as for individuals. Finance remains the lifeblood of organisations, so you can’t forget the audit basics (balance sheet and financial liquidity) – especially in a stormy macro-economic and geopolitical environment.

When you build an aeroplane you need to be confident that it can withstand greater stresses than it will ever face. The same applies to any organisation. As a profession, we must ensure that our businesses are fit to survive bigger, more destructive and more complex storms than we are seeing now.

We need to train our junior internal auditors to protect our organisations, but also to deal with the distractions and pressures these storms cause in their lives. We also need to protect them – to nurture them while they grow the roots they need to survive and thrive. If we do this, they will flourish, the profession will develop and organisations can also survive and thrive. 

Richard Brasher spoke at the Chartered IIA Conference in a session entitled “Leading my audit team: A personal perspective”.

This article was published in November 2022.