Last week’s post, where I covered Richard Chambers’ blog post about the cost of internal audits, got a lot of attention.
I agreed for the most part with Richard, but this week he and I are not aligned.
In What’s in Your Charter, and Does the Audit Committee Even Care?, he shares the results and his assessment of a recent LinkedIn poll he ran:
“Which of the following best describes how your audit committee members engage on or feel about your internal audit charter?”
- Knowledgeable – review annually – 51%
- Aware – but no annual review – 24%
- Indifferent – not a priority – 18%
- Unaware of its existence – 7%
If these survey results are indicative of the broader population of audit committees (which I fear they are), it is a sad commentary on their engagement with internal audit. A quarter of the audit committees are indifferent or unaware of the contents or existence of the charter. Another quarter are aware of the charter but are not ensuring it is current. That leaves only about half of the audit committees out there who demonstrate ongoing interest in internal audit’s charter.
As you probably know, I was a CAE at multiple global companies for a couple of decades, so I have a lot of memories of discussions with the audit committees of those companies. That includes not only discussions…
