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The Audit Podcast
Ep 278: Trust, Insight, and Audit Leadership w/ Navin Pasricha (Getting Ready to Roar)
00:41:28
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- [00:00]
A
The first question that they need to ask themselves or we need to ask ourselves is how does this particular audit that I'm looking at sit within the entire ecosystem of the organization?
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B
If you've ever been to a conference and at some point you're like, I didn't really get anything out of that, or I don't have anything practical, tactical to take back and do. That's why we started the audit analytics and AI Conference, because I can empathize. I did the same thing. That's cool. Can you show me how to do it? And so as part of the analytics and AI conference, especially the spring conference that we have on May 20 this year, from 9 to 4 Central, it's 9 to 4 Chicago time. We have six presenters, you can get seven CPEs, and it's some of the best presenters that we've had over the five years that we've been doing this conference. So these are the ones that I've seen personally, three of which for sure, I have gone back and watched their recordings, you know, months later to go, I know they did this thing that was really cool. Let me go back and watch it so I can do it too. So there's no way that you won't have something you can actually do relative to analytics and or AI. So some of the fine folks we have coming back, Brittany McKinley, Brian McNally and Val Zappia from Elevations Credit Union, Macy's and Victoria's Secret, respectively, all three of those. I've gone back and watched their sessions from the prior years to see what they did so I could replicate it on my end. And then we have Paul Kerstein and Madeline Novelli from Vulcan Materials, and they're going to show you how to use AI to build a. Like a central hub of audit intelligence paired with a library of reusable AI prompts. So you can. So any auditor on the team can use analytics. We also have multiple people from the Williams Energy audit team. So they have a framework of using AI to do analytics, but then each one prefers different tools. So one person's like, I like Python, so they do theirs in python. 1 likes r, they do it in r. 1 likes power bi, they do it in power bi, they also use data bricks. And so there's some functionality they do in databricks for SQL or even Python in there if they wanted to. So it's one. One framework that gets applied and everyone kind of interprets it and uses it differently is fantastic. And then the last of our speaker slots, so we have five. The last one we are having to keep a secret for now and hope to be able to tell you as soon as possible what that's going to be. But but I think we can at least say it's going to be very innovative. All right, like I said, it is May 20, 9 o' clock till 4 o' clock central. You can search Audit Analytics Conference. It should be towards the top. If not the top. You can go to theauditanalytics Conference. Com. Links are in the show notes. You can go to my page on LinkedIn Trent Russell find me. There's links there if you follow me. It's pretty hard to miss some of the posts that we're going to be putting up for the commerce this year. So this is probably the most exciting I've been about this conference since the very first one that we did. All right, hope to see you guys there. Thank you. Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Audit Podcast. I'm your host Trent Russell. Today on the show we have Naveen Pashrika. Naveen is a 40 year vet, an internal audit. He's held roles also as obviously are probably obvious as a cae, but as well as a CRO. But the reason we had Naveen on is to talk about his book Getting Ready to Roar. Chief Auditor's Guide, Audit Room to Board Room. We say it on the show pretty often. But one of the reasons we started the podcast was because there's not a book for chief audit executives. There's audit books. There's not really one that's like hey, this is how you be a CAE or become a CAE. There's a ton on CEOs or biographies with CEOs, CMOs, CDOs, CFOs. Like there's a ton of those. If you go on Amazon and look for books on any of those topics, there's a huge list relative to CAEs. Not a lot of stuff out there. So that's one reason we started the podcast largely because I am horrible at writing and so I figured a podcast would be easier. Six years into this, I'm not sure that is the case. But I digress. Naveen has written, I would say arguably the book. So whether you are an aspiring CAE or a current CAE audit in general, this book is going to be extremely helpful for you and your career. Obviously we talk about the book and whenever we have someone on that has written a book, we try to get just enough out of them that there's some practical tactical advice they can give you without giving away too much of the book because otherwise why would you buy the book? So we hit on that one thing I always like to ask, like what's your 80 20? Or what are the, you know, one or two practical things that people can take from the book. So we hang out there for a little bit. We also talk a lot about strategic auditing or auditing strategy. And it's likely significantly different than what you're thinking of. Maybe the end result similar. But the way to go about it, which Naveen actually goes into some detail on how to do that, which I've thoroughly enjoyed so highly recommend that. And it did not take long for the word insight to come up in talking to Naveen. And we talk about insights a ton of. So we just pointed the question how do you get insights? If that's what everybody wants, how do we give that to them? In addition to assurance, of course. And then going back to the strategy piece, I wanted to understand how to get a strategic understanding. So coming back to strategy, I wanted to understand how I and the audience and you guys could get that strategic understanding for ourselves so that we could better apply this kind of framework and really mindset that Naveen discusses not only in the book, but obviously on the podcast also. So with that said, the link to the book is in the show notes. Again, highly recommend checking that out. With that said, here we go. Naveen, if you could grab every auditor by the shoulders in the world and just shake them and say will you just do this one thing? What would that be?
- [06:13]
A
It would be and I am shaking the profession. And that means your job as well is at a real inflection point. And there is a huge opportunity for us to go from just sitting at the boardroom to actually speaking at it and being heard. And I would shake you and say take this opportunity. They only come once in a lifetime. Don't miss it very much so.
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B
And is it. Is the opportunity because of the current conditions or like where's this opportunity? Is it a new opportunity, you're saying? Or you're saying, like more philosophical? There's always an opportunity.
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A
Yeah, it is a new opportunity. And it's not allow making it is the conditions. Audit committees, who are usually the people that we report to, are under a lot more pressure than they have ever been before. And the climate, if you like the, the, the governance climate is ripe for them to get some additional support. We are able to provide that support in a unique way, but if we don't provide it, they'll simply look elsewhere because they're not Going to allow themselves. This is the audit committee members I'm talking about. They're not going to allow themselves to be driving blind, as it were. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity. Step into it or I wouldn't say we'll go into irrelevance, because that need for assurance is always there, but we won't be where we could have been.
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B
Can you expand on the, the AC pressures? How it's. It's never been like this before, is it? Does it? I feel like when we say that, everybody's just gonna go, I know he's talking about AI, but what else are we talking about?
- [07:54]
A
Oh, wow. No, absolutely. Let's start from the top of the mind. From. For audit committee member, like it or not, their personal liability is very, very high. And we're all human. And that's always at the back of the mind. Am I doing things right? And I'm doing the right things. Generally speaking, am I doing things right? Yes. An audit committee member can put his hand on his heart and say they are, but am I doing the right things? We're very dependent on somebody else to tell us. Okay. So I may have a responsibility or the buck stops here for controls, but I can't go and check them myself. I'm dependent on somebody else. Yeah. And I'm finding more and more that as and I have been an autocomp, by the way, so it's really personal reflection as well. One of the things that I found a little bit frustrating was that internal auditors needed a little bit of a nudge to look at all three time frames. So we're very, very good at understanding what the history of transactions and the history of control is telling us. And that adds up very, very usefully into giving assurance about past, past periods. We're actually also very good at understanding and giving insight as to what that means for today, what we're not so fantastic at right now. This is what I'm trying to push the profession into. Going down this track is operating in the future. So we're good at the past, we're good at the present. But hey, insight really belongs in the future as well. Yeah. And audit committees, you ask this of me. What's making it different? They are now very much on the focus or ensuring that they are covering for the risks that are coming. They're very much responsible or made responsible for the resilience of the organization. Resilience equals future equals risk equals unknown. Yeah. And that's really the, the area that the opportunity is wide open we have a unique lens in, in an organization because we do cut across silos, we do up and down, and, and in theory we have the ear of the order committee as well, which is a committee of the board. So we in effect have the ear on the board. We just don't know how to speak there.
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B
I had this question further down on my list, but you said it already, so I'm going to read you exactly how I wrote the question. Insight, insight, insight, insight, insights. That's what we talk a lot, all the time, how to get insights. And then a follow up question to that. We can come back to it. Let me tell you a story first and I'll tell you where this is coming or tell you where it's coming from. So ultimately, first question, how to get insights. I was at this AI conference a couple months ago. There's a buddy of mine kind of does similar work that I do, except he does it for like small, medium sized businesses, I guess. And there was, there's a panel of course, and someone says something about how can we use AI to democratize analytics? And I was like, oh, that's exactly what we do. That's what we've been doing for about the past 18 months, using AI to teach auditors how to do analytics. Like practically any auditor can do it now. And so I was, you know, super satisfied with my, you know, answer and was like, yeah, like we're doing something people apparently aren't doing. And so then this woman raises her hand and she's like, that's cool. And then she said, how do we democratize insights? And everybody in the room just was kind of like, oh yeah, that's, that's a much better question. So I want to start with how to get insights. And then if you have any thoughts on how to democracy democratize insights.
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A
Okay, what do you mean by democratize insights?
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B
Everyone uses it. So in the sense that, so when we say talking about democratizing analytics, that means that like anybody in the organization can do analytics.
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A
Okay, all right, I, I understand the analytics part of it, but I'm not so certain that it's, it's a requirement for. There is even a benefit in democratizing every insight. The need for insight differs at what I call strategic elevation or strategic altitude. What the needs of the board and what the needs of the person at the coal face are very, very different. They need different types of insights. In fact, that's one of the difficulties in our present method of reporting because we tend to use the same report for every audience, their needs are different. Their ability to grasp is different. Their familiarity with detail is different. So we're not really writing to an audience. We're writing to several audiences. That's an aside. What do I mean by insight? How do you at least make it available to the right people at the right time? I generally work at the board level and the C suite level. So I'll talk about how I do that. Yeah. It's a case of very disciplined recognition of recognition of patterns that have a strategic impact. The way I tend to do it is a very disciplined recognition of patterns that have a strategic impact and then assuring that that pattern is heard at the right levels and at the right time. So I'll give you a few examples. For instance, these are both from. Well, the industry actually doesn't matter for. For this particular one. But I've done work for an organization where, because of reasons of cost, there was a great deal of consolidation of functions. GRC was one of those. So you combine risk management, compliance, and governance under one umbrella. That's fine. There are many, many benefits to doing that. Then I noticed the same thing that's being talked about. It wasn't yet done. Okay. It was just being talked about in terms of combining PR and marketing. Now, those two. There are many duplications of information, and both of those functions talk to external parties, the media, and so on. But I also saw a pattern of not necessarily giving due thought to what this does to the lens that is then available to the board. Because marketing and PR are very different objectives. You put them together, and maybe both objectives are a little bit tidy, too. So I brought this up to the board. Not because I had the. Not because I had analyzed anything, but it was a pattern that became apparent. Yeah. So how do you make that pattern available to all? Let's talk about how to make that pattern recognition available to internal auditors. Yeah. Because they're the ones I'm asking to. To lift the conversation. Perfect. I think the first question that they need to ask themselves, or we need to ask ourselves is how does this particular audit that I'm looking at sit within the entire ecosystem of the organization? If I'm looking at procurement, it's not an isolation to see where it sits in the broader picture of the organization
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B
relative to the organization strategy. Is that what we're talking about?
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A
Okay. The organization strategy. Sometimes it is also the lack of patterns. So I'll give you another example. I did a project for a bank where the board had decided that this particular sector is going to be a little soft in about 17, 18, 19 months time. So we need to slowly reduce our exposure to it. Okay. Now that kind of exposure shift does not happen overnight. It's not like that. We come to 19 months and then bang, or exposure is dropped. It happens slowly and very, very by actions that you take on this case you don't take. Now, I looked at the exposures something like six months down the track that when I would have expected to see a little bit withdrawal from that sector, but it wasn't happening. So I brought that up to first the credit guys and did the normal things that you would do, but it was exactly related to what you've said. Where does it sit within the organizational strategies? Yeah. In terms of giving loans, in terms of the margin they were earning, everything was fine, but it was not heading in the direction that was intended. What happened after that, if you're interested, was actually a look, it wasn't the case of, hey, you haven't done as we asked. It was a case of knowing, well, what within our organization actually prevents this from happening. So it's fine for the board to say, this is what we want. It's fine for the CEO to say, yes, this is what we want and we'll make it happen. And it's fine also to communicate that all the way down and believe that it is embedded. But unless you change the structures which really motivate salespeople than banking, it ain't gonna change. Okay. So the best rewards were still coming from the industries that we wanted to withdraw.
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B
Got it. Okay. So we're talking about these insights. It's basically know the business, know the strategy, and then understand basically, hey, if we're not doing what we said we would do strategically, basically just instead of, I, I could envision CAEs going, not all of them, but for sure there's too many for not to be a population of these going, we're supposed to be doing this. We're supposed to be expanding into this area. We're supposed to be cutting back on this thing. And it's been six, nine, whatever months and that's not happening. Everybody's so dumb. This is so dumb. Instead being like, hey, we said we're going to do this and we're not doing it. What's up? I mean, that's basically the insight that we're talking about, right?
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A
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. You, you mentioned understanding the business and the unit that we're looking at. It actually goes one step beyond as well is understanding the industry that you're in. Because a lot of risk Isn't self generated. It is external. Yeah. And it's important to understand that and the reactions and strategies that your organization has vis a vis those external pressures. Yeah.
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B
Yep.
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A
So there's all three. You go, you gotta be as CEO, think as the CEO.
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B
And for anyone who is interested in more, because I know you've talked about these stories because I know at least one of them sounded familiar. If you go to Naveen's LinkedIn, go to his posts and then just start scrolling through, there's so much good stuff. I mean, I did it in preparation for this podcast we're doing and I just, I mean, I probably spent 45 minutes just look, reading through all your posts and I was just like, this is so good. Had you not written a book? I think the first question I said is, hey, can you just write a book? Because your stuff on LinkedIn is incredibly good, especially the stuff over the past six months. So thank you a ton for that. And what you've put out there, if you're not connected, highly recommend it. And like I said, take 30 minutes and just posts and then just start scrolling through and reading what Naveen's posted over the past 612 months. It's really good. Okay, let's get to the book. So we got the book getting ready to roar. I came across it, I think in a way a lot of people did. Hal Guerin, who's been on the show, I don't know, multiple times, he's been recognized as internal audit thought leader from for years and years and years and years and years. He reads a book or three a week. It seems like some are internal audit related. Most of them are not. And so he this post that was like, hey, this is like the best book or one of the best books, audit or otherwise, that I've read in however long a year. I can't remember what it was. And he's like, I've been, he's, you know, he's like, I've been sharing it with every CAE that I talked to. And I went, okay, well, I know Hal well enough to know that if he's recommending a book that it's got to be pretty good. So with that said, I'm sure we've already said it at the intro. Go check out the book. We'll hyperlink to it so people can check it out and buy it. Highly recommend it. I did want to ask you that without giving away too much of the book. That's what's always hard about doing these with people who write books. It's like, let's talk about it. But we also don't want you to give away all the good stuff because people need to go buy it. But with that said, if there's like a one or two things that's going to make the biggest difference for an internal auditor, or we can keep it at a CAE level if you want, or another way I like to ask it is like, what's the 80, 20 kind of analysis on this? Like, what's the 20% thing I can do that's going to make the biggest impact across the other 80%? What would be those one or two things? And you might have already touched on it to a degree already, but what would that be?
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A
Thanks for that. And, you know, just reiterating that Hal has been a real supporter of this book and, and he is a thought leader and it just so happened, I think that we're both heading in the same direction in terms of seeing the opportunities for, for, for the profession. In fact, that's why I wrote the book. I, I really needed to synthesize what I saw was happening for the profession. And that's why I called it Getting Ready to Roar. Not roaring or anything like that. Okay. It is very much a book that looks at the big picture in terms of the challenges particularly CAEs are going to have in trying to move along this path that I've, that I've outlined. There is a lot in there on how to handle the practical issues. So the, the, the one issue that keeps coming up again and again and again is, okay, we start advising boards and our management now what does that do to our independence? So the book tackles that head on, suggesting a few practical things that you can do. It also looks at the other sort of pillar that's needed for us to enter this domain, and that is trust. So it focuses very much on how to build that trust. Trust doesn't happen overnight, as you know. So how to build that trust? And the third thing I want to say is there are, as internal auditors, we are not so great at blowing our own trumpet. Yeah, yeah. In fact, we keep quiet even when people have inaccurate perceptions of what we do. When people say, you know, you're the policeman or your thinking is historical, to my mind, hello, that went out 50 years ago. Okay. And incidentally, I have been in the profession about 48 years. Okay. From experience that that perception did exist, but it went away. And when people, when people bring it up now, we don't even defend ourselves. So the point I'm getting at is we're one not only not good at defending our perception, we're definitely not good at portraying and marketing what we do now. Yeah. And what we bring to the table now. So the book does have almost, if you like, a blueprint, and that's the only area that it's got an actual blueprint is how to progress in making your value better Understood. You know, we still hear things that internal orders, but add value, been adding value for a very long time. Yeah. But we don't portray it, we don't explain it. There. There is an aside on this. As we get more and more into the advisory type of domain and our conversations start being natural conversations at the board and the audit committee, not related only to reporting, but to discussing and to reflecting as a whole, as the audit on the audit committee, as to what is going to happen. A lot of things will happen. We will start influencing decisions. Yeah. That is a real impact, but it is an impact that we will not be able to own. So if action happens, is the board. If management structures change, is the CEO. Yeah. So that's something we just need to be aware of, that we're not suddenly going to move into the hero's chair. Yeah, to an extent. Influencers never do. Yeah. But the value that we add comes from influence at the right time. And that influence at the right time often means where we have to suspend traditional internal thinking, which is, I did some tests, I came to a conclusion, I have the evidence, and this is the insight that I'm giving. It is, hey, things are going to happen, but of course I cannot be sure. And this is the level of resilience that I think we're at now. And this is what needs to change. Because if we don't, then there is this possibility. I don't have evidence of it, but you need to trust me on this. And I lay my reputation on the line for this and my understanding and judgment.
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B
And these, these, sorry, these conversations are happening. Not, hey, it's the end of the quarter and this is audit committee or it's. It's what, like where are these conversations being had?
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A
Maybe they, they can be had at the formal audit committee meetings. But you'll. And you'll find this very much slated in the book is that we have to build relationships both with management and the audit committee that are outside the formal audit committee meeting. Yeah. I need to be able to pick up phone and talk to my audit committee chair. Now, I did a quick sort of straw poll of CA because I wanted to make this point today. And said, well, how many of you have actually have the telephone number, mobile phone number of the aud community chair? I asked 10 of my friends. Okay, two max, go ahead. Okay. And of the two, one actually used it quite regularly. Okay. The other did use it, but almost to set up meetings.
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B
Okay. Yeah, there was when I was in fte, I mean, I remember we would have like our all hands meetings, you know, like the internal audit team. We'd all get together and what, whatever. I mean, celebrate somebody's birthday or talk about, you know, actual work or something. And so many times the CAE would get a call and just go up, I'll be back in a minute. And then he would step out and then he would come back in and go, that was the audit committee chair. And she wanted to know this, this, this, this. And he had the same relationship with her. He would, you know, if he needed something or had something to say, he would just pick up the phone and call her. So I thought that was pretty normal because that's how I grew up. I guess I was raised. So when you said two, that's why for those that are watching the video and saw my reaction, that's where that came from. I would have thought it would been 60 to 80%.
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A
Yikes. It could be simply the people that I talk to. Okay.
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B
Yeah, yeah.
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A
And it is, it's interesting that there are actually a lot of regional differences in the relationship that.
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B
Yeah, So I think that's a good point too. Just quickly, geographically you've been, it seems like all over the world. Right. So this isn't limited to just like the US and so maybe it's different US as opposed to the. Where all have you worked? I mean, I don't even know if we have time. Can you list everywhere that you work?
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A
Well, I've had nine country changes to live in. I've had something like 12 external jobs and I've delivered projects in 39 countries.
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B
A little bit of experience in. When you say geographically and culturally, that might be why the 10 that you asked are the two. Two out of 10. Okay. Okay. I was, thought. I thought you were going to mention this other poll. So I have this poll pulled up that I was interested in that you ran. I thought I had the date on here, but. So you're in this poll on LinkedIn. Again, just connect, scroll through Naveen's post and you're going to find good stuff like this. So the poll you ran was what is the skill most overlooked by chief auditors aspiring to board positions 350 people voted, 60%, which is the largest by a large margin, said strategic leadership and vision. The Next highest was 17%. And that was communication at board level. So I'm going to read it again. What is the skill most overlooked by chief auditors aspiring to board positions? Strategic leadership and vision. You have any guidance on how to develop strategic leadership and vision?
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A
Yeah.
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B
For those that are like, well, yeah, that's me, I'm in that bucket. But how do I develop that? I mean, there's not a book or a course that I can take on Coursera for that.
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A
That poll is actually about a year old. I think, happily, things have moved along. At that time, CAs were just starting to talk about strategy. Now, I think just a year down the track, it's become part of our natural language. I live a lot on LinkedIn, so certainly there it's not uncommon for CAEs to be talking about strategy. So things have moved along a little bit. I think the we have to speak same language with the same people. It's not going to be instant, but we have access to the people who decide strategy. So let's start making that relationship a little bit less formal and a little bit dependent on quarterly presentations. Right. And I think this is the point that I was trying to make for as well. We've got to make that into a real human relationship. I have a chat. Yeah. I'm not always reporting to you because that does two things. One, it puts me as a CA into a box that only comes out as a jack in the box. Yeah. At a particular time. And it actually also degrades my status from advisor to reporter. The same thing, for sure. They're not the same thing. Yeah. You take advice from a peer or somebody who is more knowledgeable or more experienced than you. You don't take advice from, and this is simply human nature, you don't take advice to somebody who consistently reports to you.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think you're speaking the truth.
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A
Yeah, yeah. And I think that is a step that has to be taken delicately. You don't suddenly start inviting yourself to somebody's part.
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B
Good point, Good analogy.
- [33:32]
A
Okay. Yeah. I have come across things that CAEs have done which are almost the same, which the best I saw this was in Malaysia where I speaking few months ago and then was the current president of the IIA was explaining how she has a governance day every year within her organization at which not only the audit committee is invited, but the leadership of management, the leadership of auditor invited as well. And it's largely without Agenda. So it's a meetup and talk about things of governance, what's happening, what's not happening. So it's an informal. It's an informal formal meeting. Got it. I had another example of somebody working in an Australian company that has, as a company, they have one day a year where everybody must, everybody must do a give back to the community. On that particular day, the whole organization focuses on, on doing something for, for the community. It could be something that you've generated, so it could be your favorite charity you want volunteer at or so on. So this CA invited the audit committee to come with him to go and volunteer at a children's. At a children's channel. Yeah. So a little bit of creativity in breaking down the formal barriers so that we have a human relationship as well. And then, hey, guess what? They are my colleagues. Okay. So that movement from reporter to colleague is what really you're after. Okay.
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B
And I know there's, I don't want to get on this topic. I just briefly mention it because I know people listening and I've heard this before. CAE or audit leader go, I can't have a relationship with the CEO because that impedes my independence. And I just kind of roll my eyes like that sounds like an excus not to do your job. And so I know you in the book, you talk about independence, and so we'll, we'll leave that for another conversation. I think you also, you're on Jason Mer's podcast and I think you guys talked independence there. So if anybody wants that perspective, and Jason in general is pretty open about his opinion on independence. So you could probably just chat GPT, like, give me Jason Mer's opinion on independence and you'll see the other, the other side of it. If you're the one who goes, oh, I can't do that because of independence. Um, there's some interesting, interesting stuff out there from there. So I know. And again, looking through your LinkedIn posts, reading the book and talking to you now, strategy is still a big piece of this and strategic understanding. And we can call them strategic audits to some degree, which again, if you, if you know Naveen, you know that that's not something that is. There's no work program for that to be followed. There's no audit program necessarily to be followed, which I think makes some people uncomfortable. But how do you build that? How could someone in the audience build the strategic understanding for themselves?
- [36:59]
A
A few ways, I think if it is during work, as it were, and you're doing an audit, I Think have it as a standard question. What is the main strategy that this unit or this function is following? So you ask that question yourself, and you'll find it surprising that many of the management who you are auditing actually won't be able to articulate what their main strategies are, particularly when you're looking at a function rather than the overall organization.
- [37:33]
B
Yeah,
- [37:36]
A
so that's an obvious question to ask. I think it's a very necessary question to ask, especially at the inflection point that we are at. It's a good way to start a strategy conversation with the people you're working with. The second is spend a lot, and I mean a lot of your time on understanding the industry as a whole, because you will find it very, very easily reflects into what you see in your own organization. We tend to understand our processes. We tend to understand the, both the strategies and the tactics that the organization is following. But we don't know the background as to why they reacted in this way and more importantly, what they're going to have to react in the future. And if you concentrate on the industry, you'll quickly find that you are half doing the job of the risk manager in any case, and you are half doing the job of the. The strategy development unit, if there is such a thing in your organization. Because you're talking the same language, is talking about the same external levers and pressures and opportunities, you are talking strategy.
- [38:53]
B
Perfect.
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A
Those are the sorts of natural things that you can do without going to a class. Okay, why don't. Going to class is not a bad thing. Yeah.
- [39:05]
B
Okay. I appreciate that. It's like you said, strategy's been kind of a hot topic for the past couple of years. I think it helped when the, the IA standards, even for, you know, obviously it's for internal audit, but they were like, hey, internal audit, you need a strategy also. And it can't just be, here's our audit plan for the year, that's our strategy go. And so I think that's helped elevate the conversation around strategy. I know it's where we've been doing more and more work for the past couple of years relative to data and analytics, data analytics and AI strategies. And I think that's been a part of it also. So I appreciate that answer, especially the how to. So it's a thing I try to get out of folks on the show is the how to, the practical, tactical stuff. Okay. Anyway, with all that said, I do want to hand the microphone over to you. And what do you want to leave
- [39:52]
A
the audience with well, as Trent, you've been very good to say several times. I am the author of Getting Ready to Roar. It's a book that is relevant today, but I do see it evolving as we not only get it ready to roar, but we start roaring at the at the audit committee and so on. And so something a little bit different from other authors perhaps. If you do get a chance to go through the book at I think the inside back cover, you will find ways to access me and I really encourage you to do that. If you have practical challenges, I'm always happy to talk about them and give you my view. And I also love to get feedback in terms of how things are progressing down the strategic training. So I'd love to hear from
- [40:50]
B
hey everyone, thank you very much for listening to this episode of the audio podcast. Whatever platform you're listening on right now, I'm sure there's a 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 we'd really appreciate that. Lastly, be sure to check out the show notes. 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.