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The Audit Podcast
Ep 255: Follow the Risk w/ Richard Chambers (AuditBoard)
00:41:41
This week on The Audit Podcast, we're joined by Richard Chambers, Senior Advisor of Risk and Audit for AuditBoard. Richard is celebrating his 50th anniversary as an auditor this month, making this the perfect time to reflect on lessons learned over...
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- [00:00]
A
Be passionate about what you do. If, if you just see internal audit as a job, okay, yeah, I understand you got to make a living, but have some passion outside of the workplace. Right. But what I have always advocated is be passionate about this because you're doing really, really important work. You're helping to foster trust in institutions. And if, and a lot of us don't think about that aspect of it, we just think about the fact that we get paid a salary and we go do our audits and we write a report and we give it to somebody. But your higher calling here is that the culmination of your work and that of all of your peers is elevating and sustaining the trust that others have in your organization.
- [00:52]
B
Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Audit Podcast. I'm your host, Trent Russell. Today on the show, we have Richard Chambers. Richard is the Risk and Audit Senior Advisor for Audit Board. He's also the UNICEF Audit Advisory Committee Chair for the United Nations. And if you don't know him for either of those roles, he was also the former IIA president and CEO. And Richard is celebrating his 50th anniversary as an auditor this month. And so we wanted to have him come on the show and kind of do what you might expect, lessons learned, advice. You would give all those kinds of good things. And in typical Richard fashion, he took some pretty softball, almost lazy questions from me, the host, and then gave some really fantastic answers. There was a few notes for sure, that I have written down. You are listening to this in your car and you have to get out, and that's the last thing that you hear. Then I think one of the quotes that stood out to me the most was to follow the risk. Richard adds some more context to that, but I thought that was a really good quote, if nothing else, a mentality to have. We also talk about his prediction on where the profession's going and actually challenged Richard and said, you can't include AI in the answer. And I almost thought that wasn't a fair question, but then he crushed it. And then one of our favorite questions from the listeners of the show is, if you could grab every auditor in the world by the shoulders and just shake them, tell them to do just this one thing, what would that be? And so we. It's been a while since we've asked, I guess, that question. And so we broke it out of the. The vault, I guess, for Richard. All right, that said, here we go. Hey, everybody. Just wanted to make a quick announcement. September 24th and 25th of 2025 is the Audit analytics and AI Conference. It's the only conference dedicated to internal auditors strictly around data analytics and AI from the audit perspective. The goal, when we have speakers come on, is to have them show you how to do a lot of this stuff and talk about how they've been able to accomplish the things that they're going to show tactically. So it's not just this is why you should do it, it's a lot of how you should do it. It's all virtual. So if you're in a time zone halfway across the world, no problem at all. You can absolutely check out the recordings. This year you can get 14 CPEs and then two additional free CPEs. You have to come to the conference to check that part out. We have another fantastic lineup. Highly recommend. Go to the show notes, go to the website, check out the lineup, check out the topics that we have for you year again, September 24, 25th, 2025. Depending on when you're listening this, that means it's either 14 days away, eight days away, seven days away, one day away, or it's the day of. So go to the website, check it out, register and hope to see you guys there. All right, here we go. What is in either your chat GBT history or copilot history, your Internet browsing history, basically. What kind of has been going on in your world recently?
- [03:54]
A
Well, it's been a busy summer, Trent. Got a lot of, lot of work coming out of audit board. We just put out a new report on culture, organizational ethics and culture. And so I've been, I've been finding myself asking AI about culture, which is kind of fascinating when you think about it. But I think, I think how AI gets used to and how it is being used probably says a lot about the culture and organizations. So that's obviously been a hot topic. A lot of media interest in that. So in getting ready for conversations, always find myself out there, just kind of looking for other perspectives on the topic. So that's probably been for the last few days, the, the thing I found myself conferring most with AI about also looking, looking at organizing possibly a new book that might come out next year. And I've been asking AI for some ideas on how I might organize it. I feed in a lot of the topics I want to cover and I'm asking, I'm asking ChatGPT to give me some ideas about how to structure the book. So I'm finding that virtually any way that if it's a question I can ask, then I often find myself asking.
- [05:16]
B
AI, that's the overall advice that we give is stop using search engines and start using ChatGPT or whatever you have access to. And if you have a question, throw it in there. Stop using the search engines. I know some people have gotten back to me and said, yeah, I deleted the browsers off of my phone and I only use the apps, not for the most part. And how much that has kind of like helped them switch the mindset of let me go to this tool instead of this tool. The culture thing is interesting also, it seems like, and this is no surprise, the CAEs that are pretty hardcore and all in on AI are the teams that are using it the most and using it most effectively. And I think that even stems from the CEOs that are making the push too. For any company that we've talked to in the past 18 months where it's like, yeah, our CEOs all in. Audit has a ton of support. They have the tools they need. And so it's been, I mean, cliche. Top down is where culture comes from. But it's been like, you see it with AI especially.
- [06:21]
A
Yeah. And you know, it's interesting. I've been talking about culture, sorry, talking about AI in a number of settings over the last few months to audiences of internal auditors and heads of internal audit. And occasionally there'll be one or two folks in the room who really lash out in the session about how unreliable AI is and really discouraging the idea that they should be looking at it or using it. And I feel like what I'm hearing there is probably a reflection of the culture in their organizations, that it's not a culture that promotes or values innovation. And so I think you can tell a lot right now about culture and organizations by the extent to which they are or are not embracing AI and other disruptive technologies.
- [07:14]
B
Let's say that you are a new CAE asked you for a politics lesson that maybe you've shared publicly before or maybe not totally up to you, but one that you, you know, a story that you experience while you're on the job. What would be the story that you would tell them?
- [07:32]
A
Well, the, the thing that I've been, I've been writing about throughout the summer really has to do with audit committee, with the dynamics between the chief audit executive management and the audit committee. And, and there's where you can get a lot of politics. You'll get politics that come into play where you've got a CEO or other senior executives in the company who maybe aren't comfortable with a lot of transparency from Internal Audit. And that can become a real. That can become a real impediment to Internal Audit being able to carry out its work sort of free from interference, if you will. It can be a real danger to not only our independence, but. But ultimately objectivity. Because in those cases where you don't have a courageous CAE who quickly succumbs to that kind of political pressure, then Internal Audit begins to lose its objectivity. They don't tackle topics that could be sensitive, that could create any political turmoil in the organization. So, yeah, I think politics is always going to be. Is always going to be present. But the extent to which the corporate politics or the organizational politics start to interfere with the Chief Audit Executive being able to execute their role, and especially having the Chief Audit Executive be able to have the right relationship with the Audit Committee, those are the political issues that worry me the most.
- [09:09]
B
If there's, let's say, friction or whatever way we want to use to describe it between the CAE and the ac, what's the fix there is that just, hey, get better at building relationships or show the value of audit, and eventually they'll come around. Or, I mean, there's got to be a certain percentage of. It doesn't matter what you do, it's not going to work for you.
- [09:29]
A
You're talking about between Internal Audit, between the Chief Audit Executive and the Audit Committee, or between.
- [09:34]
B
Yeah, the relationship there.
- [09:36]
A
Yeah, well, hopefully that, I mean, that's the really the source of our ultimate strength in an organization. I mean, sure, we need to have a CEO who's a big champion for Internal Audit, but if there's friction or if there's a strained relationship between the Chief Audit Executive and the Audit Committee, that's a real red flag. Because the Audit Committee needs to embrace Internal Audit as sort of euphemistically their eyes and ears. They need to believe that Internal Audit has their best interests at heart. And if there's any indication that they don't believe that, then you're a. You're a CAE who's an accident waiting to happen. Because the first time you have any. Any kind of friction with management, there's going to be no one there to have your back because you haven't won their trust.
- [10:31]
B
And maybe the scenario I'm thinking of is more along the lines of because there's so many caes that go like, seat at the table, we don't have it. Trust advisor, we don't have it. Can't get a relationship with the CEO for whatever reason, maybe the predecessor didn't exactly leave the best impression on the CEO and internal audit. And it's kind of like, hey, audit committee, like that, I need your help here. And maybe they aren't getting that as much.
- [10:55]
A
Yeah, well, I mean, I wrote an article a few days ago about, about the, the classic audit committee statement, hey, we'll always be behind you, will always stand behind you. But then when there's a real, real friction with management, they're not there with you, they, they kind of fade in. It's much easier to fade into the background if you're already standing behind somebody. Right. So I, I, I've always found that cliche of, oh, we're going to stand, but right behind you. I've always, I've always kind of found that to be a little, a little, I don't take it seriously. I don't believe that it's really well intentioned. In a lot of cases, it's just kind of cliche. Hey, don't worry. We got you. We're going to take care of you. And then when the real friction starts, a lot of those audit committees, they put their head down and pretend they don't hear it or see it.
- [11:51]
B
Okay. So I think that's a level of insight that people who are either new or aspiring caes should be be aware of. So I appreciate that.
- [11:59]
A
Well, you know, my, my advice always has been, Trent, to, to CAEs, to someone getting ready to take on a CAE role or someone new in a CAE role, is that it's not a role that's, that's ripe for the faint of heart. You've got to have, you've got to have not only integrity, because I, I think most of us have integrity, but you got to have courage. And those are two very different things. We, we often say, oh, you got courage and integrity. No, no. I know a lot of people who have integrity, but, but they're, they're easily intimidated and they don't have the courage to take on the really difficult battle. So, you know, cliche again. I always talk about, you know, sailing toward the storms, pushing on closed doors. That's the kind of mentality you have to have. And ultimately you have to be willing to talk with your feet if the circumstances are such that as a chief audit executive, you're not getting support, you're being undermined, or worse yet, you're being asked to do things that are unethical. There comes a time in some of those situations where the right answer is to walk away, because there are too many examples that I know of myself and that I've written about over the years where caes tried to go along to get. Get along to go along, or go along to get along, and. And ultimately found themselves embroiled in trouble. And we've even seen caes go to jail along with management for. For some sort of a bribery or fraud example.
- [13:41]
B
I want to hit on my definition of bravery just because bravery and discipline are two things that I usually thrown around all the time. You know, you grow up playing sports, you hear about dis. Or watch sports, you hear about discipline all the time. And it always just seemed like, all right, do the thing that I'm telling you to do, or you get in trouble. So I'm not going to go on a discipline rant. But when I finally kind of realized what those two words mean is where it made, like, an actual impact on me and. And courage being. You do the thing that you're supposed to do, even though you. There is fear. And so it's like you go into it knowing, like, this is scary. I don't want to do this. Like, I don't want to jump off this cliff, or I don't want to do this thing, but I have to do it anyway. And for whatever reason, whenever that kind of clicked in my head, I went, oh, that's what it is. Like, be scared. It's okay to be scared. But then go do the thing that you have to do.
- [14:31]
A
Yeah. You know, I guess I always sort of thought about if I was going to get into a very. A very tense debate or a very difficult situation. Always. I always did some scenario planning, you know, just personal scenario planning as a cae. What if. What if this happens? Then what? You know, what if management lashes out at us about this? Then what? What if I don't have any support from either side? Then what? You don't want to. You don't want to. You don't want to get into a potentially contentious situation. And this is true not only of your professional life, but any aspect of your wife of your life. You want to. You want to have a. You want to have thought through the implications and have a. Have an action plan for if things start to. If the wheels start to come off.
- [15:22]
B
And I would add to that. It's hard for me anyway, to come up with those different scenarios on my own and then think them through. And so even reaching out to other people that you know that have been in that situation or that you can lean on mentors whoever it is, and going, like, even if it's something super simple, I know I've reached out to people and going, I know this might sound dumb, but I just need to ask you what would you do in this situation or give some guidance?
- [15:44]
A
So yeah, I mean, I'll tell you, you know, I, I do get those kind of inquiries and I try to help people, especially if I know them, but, you know, it, it's a big vast universe out there and there's tens of thousands of, of caes who fight the good fight every day. And, and as much as I'd like to help them all and give them all advice on a one on one basis, it's sometimes tough.
- [16:11]
B
So usually we'd ask someone on a show like this. So like your 50th anniversary show, lessons learned, something like that. It's kind of a softball easy question. So I'm going to ask in a little different way. It's a way, it's a question that some have said is the favorite one that they hear that we ask when we, we haven't asked it in a while though. If you could grab every auditor in the world by the shoulders and just shake them and tell them to do this one thing, just do this one thing, what would that be?
- [16:40]
A
You know, the temptation is always there to audit fluff or to audit things that maybe are easy or that we're familiar with. And ultimately, I think the, the wisest thing that the profession ever did, and many people don't realize until 25 years ago there wasn't even a requirement to consider risk when you were building an audit plan. I mean, that only came about and it's actually been 23 years, 2002, probably one of the smartest things the profession ever did is to say, hey, we need to give some real thought to where we're focusing our efforts. Because you can audit everything. You know, as I, as I often say, internal auditors can audit anything, but they can audit everything. And so then, then what's the differentiator? Well, it's where the risks are. And that may sound very obvious, but I still find that a lot of internal audit departments just don't, don't really build risk centric audit plans. And as a result, the value they provide is, it's constrained. It's not as they're not as valuable to the organization if they, as if they were really focused on where the risks are.
- [18:01]
B
Value adding value. So here's a quote also that I know that you use. I'll let you just expand on it. There's not even a question. Not exactly being a great host here. There's not even a question. I'm just going to throw it out there and you can add your comments. But I know you say value creation is more vital than value protection. What do you mean by that?
- [18:18]
A
Well, I mean value protection was the original role for internal audit. It's really about making sure, I use the example that value protection is I'm making sure that the doors are locked, the windows are locked, that no one is going to steal our money, that our assets are protected. That's value protection. And, and I'm, I'm often say that an internal auditor who's able to help you figure out where to put new doors and new windows is more valuable than one who tells you whether the ones you have are locked or not. Now, I also believe that value protection is going to, and already is in many ways falling into the wheelhouse of AI. You know, it's. Value protection is often, is often very closely aligned with assurance. Right. Assurance has been a very important mission. But in many ways, assurance is hindsight. It's giving you assurance about the state of your controls and risk management today based on what we've observed from the records, the evidence that we've examined from the past, and even if we talk about insight. So there's hindsight, insight, foresight, even insight doesn't provide as much value as foresight. And foresight is never about forecasting. We're not trying to predict the future. We're just trying to help people understand what the implications are if they don't manage certain risks or if they don't take corrective actions in a certain way. It's being able to help them appreciate the risks of inaction is, is how I often describe foresight.
- [20:04]
B
How do you, how, how can people gain foresight? Hindsight's pretty easy. That's what we've always done. Insight, from my perspective, is relatively easy with data and analytics and AI using the, the three of those especially, or the two of those especially? Three of those, I guess. But foresight, what's the, the playbook, the how to. How can we develop that?
- [20:23]
A
Well, for, for one thing, you know, I don't think foresight is for the novice. Right. If, if, if I really want to help someone understand the implications of inaction, then I have to have seen what the consequences of inaction were in the past. Right? So I do think that as we mature in our careers and as we become more astute internal auditors, we're in a Much better position to help provide some foresight. So for one thing, I think it's, it's really about in it. You know, again, if you look at my, the, the formula I lay out in the Agents of Change book that I wrote, I talked about to be real agents of change. And the way I describe it or the way I define it is these are catalysts, internal auditors who are catalysts for transformational ideas. I talk about that. The things you really have to have are, you have to have, you know, business acumen, you have to have relationship acumen, you have to be innovative. And, and so I think a lot of internal auditors are, are, are, are work in progress on those things. They're, you know, they're, they're not completely there yet. But if you really want to be adept at providing foresight, you've got to have, got to have that capability.
- [21:42]
B
Okay. That's what I was curious about is if the question my follow up was, is understanding the business a way to get there faster as opposed to, like, I don't know, just get. Gives me anxiety to think about if I was a CAE and I'm like, all right, I just have to gain more experience to, to be able to get insight like that doesn't sit well in my brain. And so like, I got to do more like, how can I get there? And it seems like understanding the business would be one of those ways to get there faster, maybe.
- [22:09]
A
Well, I think understanding the business and, and you know, for those who are watching that are not in, in the business or in the, in the, in the private sector, I would quickly caution, even in government, no matter which sector you're in, we're talking about the operations of your organization, the industry that your organization operates in. And so I think business acumen has become and is becoming table stakes. I don't see an internal auditor being very valuable or very effective in the future if they don't have certain degree of business acumen. Because again, when we think about the migration or the shift in where internal audits focus is, I think we'll have to be much more capable of drawing on what I call our superpowers if we expect to win the race for relevance in the AI era. Because AI is going to be so adept at identifying things that we might be able to identify, but we don't have the computing power up here to be able to do it as rapidly or as comprehensively as AI does. So what we have to be able to do is leverage those kind of those superpowers. And certainly when I talk about those things, I'm talking about our creative thinking, our intellectual curiosity, our relationship acumen, our. Our ability to communicate verbally. I'm. I'm quickly parsing my words there because I. I'm discovering that AI can communicate in writing better than I ever could. So I think those are the things we've really got to be focused on. But again, business acumen is so vital.
- [24:03]
B
Yep. Kind of sticking to foresight and AI. Pretty decent segue. Maybe. Maybe an obvious question, prediction on where the profession is headed. And maybe if I even challenge you a little bit to say you can't include AI in the answer, but that might not be entirely fair.
- [24:21]
A
Well, I think we were already headed there before AI, so I don't have a problem answering that question without really talking about AI. I do believe that AI will accelerate the direction, but I've been saying now for years, all the way back to my IIA days, that as a profession, we have got to be able to differentiate the value we bring. And we have to be able to bring value to organizations that are becoming much more complex. And we have to be able to do it in a risk environment that is unprecedented. So. So this decade has accelerated the need for us to transform internal audit more than any decade has ever trans. Accelerated it. Because at least two things have converged. And I'm going to violate your, Your caution not to talk about AI, but the two things that have converged in this decade are, Are what I call perma crisis, or different way of saying it is just risk, chaos and AI. And those two pressure points have created an unprecedented. I don't want to say an existential threat to internal audit, but an unprecedented need for internal audit to be transformational.
- [25:47]
B
Yeah, I think it's probably. Would you argue from your 50 years, now is the time where internal audit could add the most value ever given. PERMA crisis and AI.
- [26:04]
A
Yeah, I think we can. I think we can. We just have to have. We have to have the right. We have to have the right mindset. We have to have the right attitude. We have to be. We have to be passionate about it. We have to be confident about it. And the last thing we can be is complacent. Complacency, I think, is the biggest strategic threat to the future of internal audit in any way. Being complacent and being satisfied with what we've traditionally done, I think puts us at peril when thinking about the future.
- [26:38]
B
I agree, especially to the extent of. I've worked with people who are super Smart. Um, and I've hired people that are super smart and I've hired people that you would go not as smart, let's just put it that way. I don't know a nicer way to say it. Um, but the ones who are super smart and just didn't care, I would have gotten rid of them. As you know, I wouldn't have even brought them on had I realized that. But the ones who really have like a passion, and passion might even be strong for some people that are listening or like passion for AI or for internal audit. I don't really have a passion, but I get the job done. You know, like, I think that. And they, they care to some degree about whatever it is the organization. You know, for me, I know when I was in external audit even, and they, I ended up moving back to the city that I grew up in, and those were my clients. And I felt like, well, I want to like, take care of these clients because this is where I grew up. And so that's where more of the kind of the caring side side of the job came from than testing terminated user controls or something like, you know, like, it was more like I'd want to help like around this area because these are the organizations that some family and friends work at. And so I want to make sure that they're kind of taken care of. So that's kind of where my passion or my caring came from. So I think everybody can have a different reason for caring or having the passion about the profession that they're in.
- [28:02]
A
Trent, I know you've heard me say it, I've written about it and I've said it repeatedly. The smartest internal auditor in the room may not be the best, and in many cases they aren't. You know, just having that high IQ isn't going to help you deliver the kind of value that you could if you also have high degree of emotional intelligence, but that you're, but that you also have this inner flame, right? Because like you, I've had internal auditors who I've worked with and who've worked for me who were clearly lights out, the smartest people around, but they just couldn't get out of their own way. They couldn't, you know, their, their, their intellect controlled their behavior to the point where they weren't able to connect with the client. They weren't able to, they weren't able to keep their eye on the clock when we had to get answers quickly. There are so many reasons why a really well rounded internal auditor may not be the smartest.
- [29:11]
B
Yeah. And I think with AI, the way you can use it now, intelligence for any given person has increased significantly. It's pretty incredible.
- [29:19]
A
Yeah. As I was thinking about that answer before I even started spouted it out, I was thinking, you know, the, the smartest internal auditor in the room from now on may be maybe AI. And so what we've got to bring is the other dimension, right. The emotional intelligence, the, the relationship acumen, all of the things that it takes to be a well rounded internal auditor because we can get answers at the snap of a finger. You know what I find truly amazing about the AI tools is that often I get the answer in a fraction of the time that it takes me to write the prompts. I mean, I, you know, I could be sitting there for four or five minutes reminding, you know, reminding myself of all the things that I wanted to take into consideration writing all those prompts. I hit the send button and I have the answer within 20 seconds. Yeah, you may be maybe a two page answer. And, and that, that just, just baffles me.
- [30:17]
B
Yeah. How that works and I don't know how somebody can become more creative, but that one is critical and that's one where AI doesn't, it's not creative. I mean, all it's doing is taking what's happened in the past and then predicting the answer that you want, that you're looking for, basically. And so there's no creativity and there's no original thought in there. It does not have thought. So, so where you have to be.
- [30:42]
A
Creative, some actually believe, and I'm sure you, you, you've studied and read up on this as well that, you know, the, the exponential increase in AI capability will taper off once it has sort of completely digested everything that humans have ever told it. And we're going to have to continue to be the engine for the content that drives AI in the future because you know, it's, it's going to have, it's going to have those limitations. So yeah, it's going to be interesting to see.
- [31:15]
B
It's the creativity that you apply to the tool that's going to be significantly more important. I mean the amount of times where I have, I mean I've caught myself going, why don't I just ask the tool like. So the creativity that people come up with in being able to use these tools to solve problems is in my opinion the differentiator amongst some other things. Like you have to obviously care and have passion like we talked about, and actually put the work in but nonetheless, I wasn't exactly sure how to ask this question. This is one again that we asked on the Retired CAE series. But since you've written multiple books and are in the process of writing another and put out a weekly blog, we'll see how it goes. But if you wrote a book solely about your career, which you've done, what would the first chapter be about? And then what would the last chapter be about? And maybe the better question is, since you've already done this, what was the first chapter about? And what was the last chapter about?
- [32:08]
A
Well, in. In the case of my. My first book was Lessons Learned on the Audit Trail. And. And while it was, you know, semi autobiographical, it was really. The whole point of the book was to say, I want to take at that time almost 40 years. Almost 40 years of internal audit experience and impart the. The. The difficult lessons that I had to learn to basically to pay it forward, to make that information known to somebody who can use that information when the time comes in their own careers or their own circumstances. So in. In my book, the first. The first chapter was actually titled A Bird's Eye View of the Audit Trail. So before I got into the lessons, I wanted the. I wanted the reader to understand, you know, where had I been? Where'd my journey taken me? Because I would refer back to stories and examples of how I learned difficult lessons throughout the book. And they were able to provide. I mean, it provided some context so they could go, yeah, that was. That was where he. When he was, you know, at the Tennessee Valley Authority. That was about halfway through his career, blah, blah, blah. So the. The last chapter was really looking forward, and it was. It was really about earning a seat at the table and what that was going to take. And in that chapter, I first introduced a trusted advisor model that, you know, I quickly believed was inadequate. And that's why I wrote a second book which was on Trusted Advisors, which I explored that model more comprehensive, much more comprehensively. So in my case, it was really about describing the journey because the journey is what defines all of us, right? It's our journey that ultimately influences the next step on the journey, but also how we see the world. If we've had a difficult assignment or if we've had a series of difficult assignments, we've worked with people who are really not good people. That's going to influence how we see the world and maybe even how enthusiastic we are about being in this profession. So I do believe that it's always important to reflect on our journey. But the Other piece of advice you asked me earlier, what advice would I give internal auditors? Obviously one is follow the risk, but another, and this is the one piece of advice I give young professionals, and particularly college students. I just addressed a class of internal audit students in South Africa last month. And, and the message there is to write your own story. Don't let someone else tell you how you have to live your career, what sequence you need to take on assignments in your career. As I have often pointed out, I, 50 years ago next month, I, I picked up my backpack, or not my backpack, my briefcase. A geeky little 21 year old accounting graduate from Georgia State University in Atlanta, I and I went across the street to work in an internal audit department in a bank. And, and everybody told me, oh, Richard, that's a terrible mistake. You've got an accounting degree, you need to go to work for it. That time it was the big eight. You got to go to work for one of the big eight. That's going to be the differentiator of whether you have a successful career or not. And I was not willing to do that. I had other priorities. I wanted to work on an mba. I had some other things I wanted to do. So I walked into an internal audit department in some ways in defiance of all the advice I was being given. And one would have assumed that was the end of what I might be able to do in the public accounting world. But then flash forward, when I would turn 50 years old, I put on a backpack and worked PwC. And so I did it exactly reverse of what the advice, the conventional wisdom was. And that's the advice that I give young professionals. You know, don't, don't be completely foolish. Take advantage of the opportunities that are there, but don't feel like that it's scripted to the point you can't do what you're passionate about.
- [36:33]
B
Is this the order that the books came out in? Lessons Learned, Speed of Risk, Trusted Advisor, Agent of Change?
- [36:39]
A
Speed of Risk is simply lessons Learned, second edition.
- [36:43]
B
Okay. I just think it tells like almost a history or a story in and of itself to go like, what was this one about? Because the way you talked about lessons learned in Audit trail and like you kind of ended up with trusted advisors and then went full on trusted advisors. I thought that was kind of interesting in some ways.
- [36:59]
A
It's, it's really a chronology of, of how I think the profession is evolving in some ways. I mean the, the first book Lessons are on the Audit Trail was very much a, a retrospective about the profession as I lived it in my first 30 to 40 years, right. So I talked a lot about the kinds of challenges that we encountered, the kinds of limitations maybe that we faced. Then the second book was Trusted Advisors. And there I was trying to really take internal auditors by the shoulder and say, look, you can't just do the stuff that I did for those first 30 to 40 years. You've got to earn and sustain trust to be truly effective. And then I clearly made the case in Agents of Change that trust being trusted advisor is not enough. If all you do is sit around and wait for someone to ask you for advice. You've got to be more proactive and you got to get out there and you've got to be that catalyst for transformational ideas. And then the fourth book really says, and you can't do that alone. You really have to work alongside the other lines, the other so called lines of defense, which we don't use defense anymore. But you have to be a collaborator. You have to be willing to work with your risk managers and with your compliance professionals and with management to address the challenges the organization faces. So there is a, there is a journey even within the books from, from hindsight to foresight.
- [38:36]
B
In some ways, I'm definitely not surprised at the guidance, the insight, the advice that you gave, at least the, the amount and the quality of it that was really the goal of this. 50th anniversary is coming up.
- [38:49]
A
Yeah.
- [38:50]
B
Tell us as much as you can from what you've learned that we can get in our time here. So greatly appreciate that. I don't know if you have anything a good close, a good strong close finish here, but if you do, I'll hand the mic over to you.
- [39:03]
A
Well, thanks. Thanks, Trent. Thanks again for having me join you on the podcast. You know, I try to continue to give back to this profession long after most of my peers have, have retired and sit on the porch at home and enjoy life. I'm still trying to do some of that, but I would also tell you that it, it became a passion of mine a long time ago. And, and I, I say this to everyone. I've said it to my own adult kids as they were growing up. I say it to anyone who seeks my input and advice. Be passionate about what you do if, if you just see internal audit as a job. Okay, yeah, I understand you got to make a living, but have some passion outside of the workplace. Right. But what I have always advocated is be passionate about this because you're doing really, really important work. You're helping to foster trust in institutions. And if, and a lot of us don't think about that aspect of it. We just think about the fact that we get paid a salary and we go do our audits and we write a report and we give it to somebody. But your higher calling here is that the culmination of your work and out of all of your peers is elevating and sustaining the trust that others have in your organization. So obviously in the private sector, it's sustaining trust in the capital markets, which there's nothing more important than that. I mean, think about if there were no controls or risk management, what would happen to people's 401ks, their retirements? You know, we do really, really important work. And if you can't get passionate about that, then, then I feel sorry for you because that's the important, that's the important value we bring that nobody really ever talks about.
- [41:03]
B
Hey everyone, thank you very much for listening to this episode of the Audit Podcast. Whatever platform you're listening on right now, I'm sure there's a support subscribe button somewhere, so please hit the subscribe button there. If you're listening through itunes or Spotify, feel free to go give us that five star rating. It only took me about 16 seconds to give myself a five star review and it really helps to get future guests to come on the show, so.
- [41:24]
A
We'D really appreciate that.
- [41:25]
B
Lastly, be sure to check out the show notes and follow us on all our social media channels, on Instagram, on LinkedIn, and on TikTok. Also, if interested, please sign up for our weekly newsletter from the Audit Podcast. Thank you all. Have a great one.