Internal Audit and Assurance | Board Shorts Podcast Ep. 60

If you’re on a board, there’s a very high likelihood that you have had many discussions about your organisation’s policies and procedures. And rightly so, they are the board’s remote control throughout the organisation, helping to ensure that things are done in the way that the board considers appropriate and, in some instances, necessary. Creating, checking, updating, and approving policies and procedures is something that I have spent many committee and board meetings – and time in between meetings – working on. This is time well invested; however, it’s only a third of the picture. The other two-thirds are (1) implementing the policy or procedure, and (2) checking in that the policy or procedure is being followed and the outcomes of it are what were intended.

It’s this final third of your organisation’s operations that my conversation today is focused on: making sure all of those policies and procedures are being following as required so that they the desired outcomes are realised. Whether it’s risk reduction or mitigation, maintaining quality, legislative compliance, or safeguarding financial assets, there needs to be someone checking in that the rules are being followed.

That person is usually referred to as an internal auditor. And I have one with me on this episode; Peter Francis is the Managing Director of aceia, a professional services firm specialising in internal audit and risk management across Australia and New Zealand.

Peter has over 25 years of experience in risk and internal audit; doing that job that many are more than willing to hand over to someone who – as you will hear – believes it’s sexy! Peter is an accountant by education, is a Certified Internal Auditor and a Certified Member of the Institute of Internal Auditors, so he knows his stuff.

Peter and I discuss what exactly internal audit is, how and why an organisation engages with an external internal auditor, and the impetus for why a Board may want to introduce internal audit activity and the value (and assurances) it will bring. I hope by the end of this conversation you get as excited over internal audit as Peter is! Or at least understand the value in bringing in someone like Peter to support the Board in its risk management role.