Understanding a company’s strategic and operational risks in an increasingly complex business environment is both a top priority and a top challenge—and internal audit has a vital role to play. Staying attuned to the company’s changing risk profile—including its control environment, culture, and crisis readiness—has put a premium on internal audit being in sync with the audit committee.
This year alone, major shifts in the regulatory and business landscape are demanding more agility from internal audit. New cybersecurity disclosure rules for public companies have arrived, and final climate disclosure rules and proposed human capital management disclosure rules could follow shortly. The use and experimentation with artificial intelligence is becoming pervasive as well.
The chief audit executive (CAE) can help audit committees monitor these trends, understand what’s happening at every level of the company (as the committee’s eyes and ears), and connect the dots.
As panel members suggested during the KPMG Audit Committee Leadership Forum in June, keys to the CAE’s value-add to the audit committee include the following:
- Recognizing how dramatically the…
