With considerable experience working with leading audit functions, we are able to help Heads of Internal audit with tailored services that bring out the best in what the audit team can do.
Work with clients includes:
- Preparing for an External Quality assessment
- Supporting the audit team on risk based auditing
- Creating impactful audit reports, including working on the quality of Root Cause analysis for internal audit
- Supporting the audit team to address hard to audit areas such as
- Strategic initiatives
- Auditing Culture and control environment
Auditing Culture / Assurance in relation to Culture
We are helping a number of leading financial services and other organisations to create a tailored approach to auditing culture. This consulting is founded on great experience in this field, further enhanced by our delivery of the Auditing culture course for the IIA UK. In addition, Director James Paterson helped the development of the new IIA guidance on auditing culture.
Key messages in relation to Auditing culture include:
- Having clarity about the link between risk culture and the wider organisational culture
- Having clarity about the current approach to measuring culture and risk culture so that any audit efforts recognise this
- The need to recognise that organisations will have sub-cultures
- The recognition that there is no agreed framework for measuring risk culture, key players each have their own preferences, none of which are perfect
- A need to look at the current audit methodology to understand to what extent it looks at cultural issues, which will include looking at the approach to root cause analysis
- A need to understand the relationship between the organisations risk culture and risk appetite
- A recognition that this is a highly subjective and judgmental area to audit, with auditors needing to understand the influencing and political challenges that can arise
- Recognising that if audit runs ahead too far and becomes responsible for leading the approach, making it much harder to look at objectively in the future
Sample Projects
| May 2016 – Present
| Preparing for an External Quality Assessment – EQA/QAR (against IIA Standards) (numerous clients) | Numerous assignments helping internal audit teams to clarify in their own minds the issues that matter the most when preparing for an IA EQA against the IIA Standards. |
James has helped me and my team in a number of areas, examples being improving the way we conduct and report on our audits and helping with our assurance mapping. This has all been done in a positive and supportive manner, helping the team to embed learning from these sessions.
I contacted [James] for advice as to how Assurance Mapping techniques could be applied in my own authority. Not only were his ideas very constructive, his approach was very professional yet carried out in a friendly, easy going manner which greatly helped my understanding of the issues involved. James was then always happy to deal with any follow up queries I had and he helped to fine tune and discuss the approach with the rest of my team who similarly very quickly formed the same positive view of James’s style and manner. We have recently introduced this new approach into my authority and the results and comments to date have been very encouraging, thanks in no small way to James’s advice and assistance. I would have no hesitation recommending James to anyone.