Is Technology the Solution for Internal Audit?

I recently spoke at a conference organized by Corporate World Intelligence.

I was honored to be the opening speaker of the conference, talking about “Selecting the Technology for Internal Audit in 2022 and Beyond”.

My theme was that before you dive in and spend internal audit’s limited budget on some of the fancy technology advocated by consultants and vendors, we should follow the advice we give to the business.

• Understand your needs and the value you seek to obtain.
• Identify the solution that best meets or exceeds your needs.
• Acquire it only if justified by the return on investment.

Unfortunately, many purchase technology tools and only then look for a way to use them.

In these days of dynamic change and business disruption, risks are changing all the time and internal audit’s risk assessment and planning needs to be almost continuous – at the speed of risk.

Enterprise risk-based auditing means that you are always striving to address what matters most to the success of the organization, the risks that matter today and will tomorrow. You eliminate audits, or parts of audits, of stuff that might matter to middle management but not to the senior leadership.

We need to…