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The Audit Podcast
Ep 282: Why Culture, Not Tech, Drives Audit Innovation w/ Andrew Struthers-Kennedy and Arpit Shah (Audit Innovator Award)
00:36:20
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- [00:00]
Arpit Shah
Sorry, I would say if you don't have an idea, ask your friendly AI assistant, hey, what are some quick win ideas that I could try out in my environment and you know, see what it comes back with? There's no harm in asking that question.
- [00:16]
Trent Russell
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 framework that gets applied and everyone kind of interprets it and uses it differently. It's 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 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 the auditanalytics conference.com links are in the show notes. You can go to my page on LinkedIn. Trent Russell, find me. There's links there 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 conference 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.
- [03:04]
Podcast Host/Producer
Thank you.
- [03:07]
Trent Russell
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Audit Podcast. I'm your host, Trent Russell, and today on the show we have Andrew Strothers Kennedy. He's the global lead for CAE Solutions at Protivity. And we also have Arpit Shah, who's the head of Audit AI Data and Tech Solutions at DTC cc. You've all probably heard us talk about Protiviti's Audit Innovator Award. So this is something they started doing two years ago. And basically within your audit department, if you have a sweet project, a really cool project, something of value, you can submit it to Protiviti and they go through everyone who made a submit and then they basically pick the winners through multiple categories. I'm not going into too much detail. That's kind of why Andrew is on this episode, is to talk about that program in a little bit more detail. Also talks about when it's going to open back up. So if you and your team have done something innovative, then keep an eye out for when the submissions open back up. The winners are recognized at GAM every year and then apparently they also have to come on the Audit Podcast. So Andrew's going to speak about the award, how everything works there. Arpit and his team are one of the ones that won in one of the categories. This is year two for them. So they also were recognized in the previous year in a different category. We don't want to give too much away on the project itself that they got recognized as the winner for, because Arpit is going to be speaking at the audit analytics and AI conference on May 20 links in the show notes and go into more detail on that. He's going to be able to share screen talk about the project itself, kind of how they got there and developed it. So what we wanted to focus on more so with Arpit was where does this innovative mindset come about? Is there a process that's followed? DTCC is a huge internal audit team. So how do you come up with these ideas and then get them implemented also, especially if you got to consider all the governance around some of these, working with people in the business and management to get access to data or whatever the case may be. By and large, the bigger the organization, the more difficult it is to make all this happen. So we wanted to get a little insight into their process of innovation. With that said, here we go. All right, arpit. I used ChatGPT recently because I had a leak in my washing machine and I did not know how to fix it. Or rather I thought it'd be significantly easier just to take a picture of it and ask AI to tell me how to fix it, which it was, and so I didn't have to troubleshoot it. So that's how I've been using it a little bit as of the past two days in my personal life. Do you have any instances like that or other use cases for your personal life where you use it?
- [05:43]
Arpit Shah
So I'll start out with my own washing machine story before this is pre AI a few years ago because just to give a sense of who I am, the engineer in me wants to always tinker. And so before AI came out. Well, this is way before ChatGPT washing machine broke down. And I say, you know what, I'm going to fix this, right? And, and so long story short, spent six weeks trying to buy parts, replace the parts, and actually got a lifetime cut on my hand after which I was like, you know, blood isn't worth it, we're just going to get a replacement. So that was my pre AI story and I really wish ChatGPT or something was around, although that wouldn't have probably saved me for myself. So where I use AI now, more recently, I'm trying to build more of a personal brand on LinkedIn as well as, you know, really just kind of as a speaker and as a thought leader. And so more recently I've actually used Claude, it's kind of my, my go to AI of choice to build out a sort of a Claude LinkedIn. Call it, you know, agent, conversational agent that helps me write LinkedIn posts in my tone, avoid some of those Things that we see on LinkedIn that, you know, that make it sound like AI slop. Right? The, I think one of the terms was broetry, contrarian, sort of terminologies, et cetera. I still always review all the posts, make sure that they resonate with me on a personal level. And for the most part I do heavily edit. But I do use Claude sometimes to really just come up with the thought and the idea and sort of a skeleton of what I want to put on LinkedIn. So that's one. It does also help with replies to LinkedIn posts that, let's say, mention me. So I'll usually just take a screenshot of that post and you know, share it in Claude and say, hey, craft or apply to this in my tone and, and it does a fairly decent job at that. So, Andrew, that's how I'm, you know, I'm always getting quick LinkedIn responses to, to what, to what you post. But that's, that's been my most recent one. I do use, you know, again, Claude as well for a lot of ideation and sparring. So, you know, I'll talk to him and say, hey, you know, I'm looking for some really good ideas and I mostly use it for the work setting. In this case, I'm looking for some great ideas on how to apply, let's say, graph rag in the audit world. And you know, we'll drill into that a little bit more and say, okay, like what's actually realistic and doable? And now show me a reference architecture for this, you know, that I can actually take in my role and say, okay, let's, let's digest this, let's talk with the team and say, does this actually make sense? And you know, is this something we want to build out? My very, very last one that I did, I want to say last week was it's tax season. So I was like, hey, is my retirement on track? Right? Not that I'm looking to retire anytime soon, but I'm just curious, right? And quick disclaimer, hire a financial planner. This is not a replacement financial planner, but I did go to Claude and say, listen, you know, here's my 401 balance. Let's just take some very basic projections and very basic assumptions. Am I on track? Like, what's my, you know, here's my age. What am I going to be at at 67. And by the way, I also have, you know, IRAs. So let's bake that in. And you know, funnily enough, or, you know, really, really cool Output was not only did, did Claude kind of tell me, all right, here's your kind of breakdown and, and your, you know, by age, right here's where you're going to be in, in terms of your balance. But it also said all right, I can create a. And it, it went ahead and created a quick app for me that I could, it was a simple page and I could open a web browser, put in my numbers if they ever change, put in my assumptions, some of the like nuanced assumptions that you know, you don't really get in like in a spreadsheet or on some of these cookie cutter websites. It, it built that around my profile which I loved about it. And, and so definitely looking forward to kind of using that more as my, my, you know, financial situation evolves. So that was, that was how I use it.
- [09:50]
Trent Russell
Yeah, I like that one. Similar. Similarly, mine's more on the CPA side where I have to go like is this okay? How do I classify this? What kind of transaction is this? And I definitely have not gone back to reconcile and see dollars saved and not asking my firm that. But it's, it's up there, it's enough. If nothing else, it's an immediate answer and it's okay, now I know the answer. I can go put it as that and I can leave it alone. I don't have to like wait for somebody to email me back and go this is how you should that and then we go in and do it and then go from there. So if nothing else, I just like the immediacy of here's the thing I need to do. I know the answer now let me go do it now I'm done with it and I can move it out of my brain to do list that keeps me up all night anyway. Okay, Andrew, what about yourself stuff in your, your personal life, how you're using it as well. If you have anything in your professional life also, that's fine as well.
- [10:45]
Andrew Strothers Kennedy
Yeah, a few. So helping with recipes, either taking pictures of or putting an inventory of what's in the pantry, what's in the fridge and looking for some creative ideas especially we've got a few things that need to get used right. And I don't have those in the memory bank. Super helpful for that. Use that many times a week and then a lot. With our kids, we have a 13 year old daughter, 11 year old son. They get a huge kick out of AI created imagery and I'll send those to our family text chain. I coached our son's soccer team for A few seasons. And I used ChatGPT at the time to help me with like team raps, which like nine year old boys really loved. And I, you know, rap.
- [11:34]
Trent Russell
Is it like R A P? Okay. I didn't know if that was a soccer term or not. Okay.
- [11:40]
Andrew Strothers Kennedy
No, no, like rapping. So got it. Every other boy loved it. My son not so much. But the best thing was we would be down like two one at halftime and as the boys were coming off the field, I could just get my phone out and say, I need a pick me up wrap for the end of the halftime talk. Go. Which is two one down. And it would come back and nail it every time with some of the context. And then our kids are in school clubs and things. So I've used it to help design member badges for their clubs and logos and those kinds of things. And I mean, they get a real kick out of that. And those are, those are the kinds of like personal, personal stuff I use it for. And it's, it, you know, there's just a better job than I could even like, you know, contemplate doing with all of that stuff.
- [12:28]
Trent Russell
Yeah, we've, we've talked to other folks about outsourcing to a degree, parenting to it to some, to some degree. You know, like, so I coached our kids flag football team and the rules say every kid has to play about the same amount of time. Like, you can't just sit a kid on the bench for, you know, 90% of the time. And so, and it's kind of been interesting because I've done it two years in a row now to see how the models change. Like, the first time it took forever to get it to do it right. But it was like, here's every kid on our team. We had three fast kids. The key to flag football at that age is give the ball to the fastest kids on the team. And so it was, I want at least two of these kids on the field at all times, but every other kid has to get the same amount, you know, the same amount of. The equal amount of playing time, tell me when to sub them and all that kind of good stuff. And that way if any parent ever came up and said, my kid's not playing enough, I would just be like, it's right here. I mean, I got it all. And I just, I literally would stand there and go, all right, YouTube, go get those two. All right? And then four minutes later, you two, go get those two. Made it super, super easy. Like the logistics of trying to keep up with that in My head while calling a game and figuring out plays and stuff and strategy along the way was really helpful. So I really like the kids sports use examples. If anybody else has some of those, we're in baseball season right now, so we'll take, we'll take some of those, but okay. With that said. So reason why we wanted to have the two of you on is because Arpit and team for the second year in a row have been recognized by Protiviti and this Audit Innovator Award. So they've won two years in a row now. And so we wanted have you both on one. I want Andrew to speak to how the award works for those that are interested in wanting to apply next year, how they can go about doing that selection process, all that kind of good stuff where, where even maybe the idea for this came from. And then we'll kind of transition into Arpit and see get a little peek behind the curtain in terms of how did you and team come up with this idea that ultimately won you the award. So Andrew, if you could just kind of give the audience, for those that aren't aware, how the, maybe that a brief history of the award itself, the process to sign up maybe some degree of the evaluation process and what it really takes. Because I think if nothing else, I think people see those that are in the know, they go, oh, these are the people that want it. That's cool. But then I know just in talking to you the amount of work that it takes to get to those winners is, is a lot. So anyway, with all that said, Andrew, I'll throw it to you.
- [14:51]
Andrew Strothers Kennedy
Yeah. And I'll start by saying maybe we'll put a link to the website in the, in the comments to this video. But search Protivity Order Innovator Award and you'll find our landing page. Actually on that landing page there's some background information and FAQ guide. It does talk about the judging process, which we believe is extremely rigorous. But you know, a few years ago, a few of us at Protivity kind of we're looking at the market and seeing, you know, a lot of kind of focus on transformation and innovation. Some like you're really impressive visions for where the profession could go and some of that innovation actually in action or a lot of that innovation in action. And what we saw was a gap in anything that was spotlighting, showcasing, recognizing and celebrating all of the cool things that we were seeing happening in the profession. So that was kind of our catalyst to establish, establish this program. We sort of framed things out. We took it to our partners both at the IAA and Optro back then audit board and asked them if they wanted to kind of come along for the ride as supporters for for the program to other Obviously the IAA needs no introduction but kind of Optro in the technology space for our profession and more broadly in the GRC space is a leading name. So we felt like our name the IAA and Optro was a a good kind of like trifecta of folks to kind of bring this forward. So we launched 2024. We launched the inaugural Order Innovator Award program. At the time we had two categories Enabling Technology and Strategy and Transformation. And that was to recognize leaning innovators in those seeking to kind of drive progress around strategy and methodology and the way we work and then the use of, you know, enabling technology, the use of technology, data automation, AI, all of the cool things that everyone's doing with those. We're now through the end of our second season. We added a third category around people and culture. In the 2025 season that was just concluded with the category winners and others recognized at the IA's GAM conference recent GAM conference the third category we added was around people and Culture and that was just really to recognize and be able to kind of showcase a lot of what is a focus for many audit leaders around talent, culture and the necessary evolution of those dimensions to future ready an internal audit team. And then new for this year, not planned when we went into the program was the addition of a Trailblazer recognition. And that's not a category that anyone was able to apply for. It was an evaluation of applicants who'd been with us last year, been with us this year, had demonstrated multi kind of category activity traction and the driving of outcomes. So multi year effort, broad based and what we viewed as kind of clear leadership and innovation orientation and mindset. And this year we recognized both DTCC and Microsoft in the Trailblazer category. So that's kind of the lay of the land. But really the program is there to help spotlight, encourage, inspire, recognize, celebrate leading innovators in our profession and just kind of demonstrate to the whole profession that there's tons of cool stuff happening. I think sometimes we give ourselves a hard time that we're maybe not the most innovative. My observation is that couldn't be further from the truth. And there's as much if not more cool stuff happening within internal audit teams as there is in any other functional area within organizations. So that's what we really wanted to develop this platform and this program to Help showcase, recognize and celebrate. And we're just like, you know, super thrilled to have had two very strong years of applications. And we just hope it continues to, to grow year on year.
- [19:09]
Trent Russell
I kind of have a biased population or data set because I mostly just work with internal audit teams. But I know a lot of teams who have said finance, accounting, they're coming to us and going like, hey, how can we do what you guys are doing? Or I love this one team we're working with and you know, it's kind of like what's the vision for AI relative to you and internal audit? And they said we want to be like the leaders in the organization so that other teams come to us. And so we are the ones that are like pushing this, the adoption of it and use cases and things like that, which I thought was really, really cool. Okay, so I know Andrew and being involved in like just even my conference and things like that. As soon as it's over, basically planning for the next one begins. And so I know we just had the announcement at GAM just a few weeks ago, but for those that are interested, is there a timeline open for or an idea of when people can like submissions are going to be back open for 2026 to apply like roughly or, or any specific dates, anything like that? For those that are keeping an eye open.
- [20:08]
Andrew Strothers Kennedy
Yeah, probably over the summer, middle part of the summer, probably shortly to. To follow the IA International Conference towards the end of June. So July, July, August timeframe. And you can go onto our website, register interest, you'll get updates and notifications and we'll make kind of announcements through the various channels when the 2026 season is open for applications. But over the course of the next couple of months. Right now we're kind of planning around additional categories, geographic expansion, those types of things. Right. How to continue to scale and grow the program so, you know, more to come and all of that. But over the next couple of months, we'll be open for applications for this season.
- [20:48]
Trent Russell
Perfect. And for those that aren't subscribed to protivities like newsletters, they put out a lot of really good stuff. I know newsletter can just be a lot of them. I mean, I feel bad for the people on the receiving end of ours and just like feel like we send a lot of these. Let's maybe just take a break. But you guys put out a lot of good stuff, a lot of good white papers, reports, surveys, things of that nature. So I'm sure the announcements will be in there. So all that to say if you're listening and you're not on that newsletter list. Sign up for it so you can stay up to date on what's going on relative to the award as well as all the other good stuff that you guys at Protivity put out. So appreciate it. Andrew Arpit, I'm curious. This is like year two for you guys and so there's got to be a mindset. There's, there's a secret to a sauce that's happening here. And so I do want you to hit on briefly the project itself and, and what it actually consists of. But I know we're going to talk about that at the Audit analytics and AI conference, so you're going to speak at that and go into more detail there. So I don't want to give away too much during this, but if you could just like, what is the process? I know various teams do things like hackathons where it's like, hey, let's all get in a room, let's come up with some stuff, let's poc it and see what comes out. Some teams have this pure autonomy and like, hey, everybody gets a handful of hours a week and if you come up with something, just go mock it up, see what you know, see how it works. Other teams will go, hey, fill in this, you know, form and it'll go into our backlog. And then our governance team or whoever will, we'll sit around, we'll discuss it and come up with like, oh, we think this one and this one are worth investing time and resources into. So anyway, with all that said, what's the process like for you guys? Because it's clearly working.
- [22:31]
Arpit Shah
So the answer is a little bit of all of the above. But I will say number one, right? DTC scene, we are proud to have won the award two years in a row. And so the number one probably secret sauce to the formula is really a little bit, I would say the autonomy, but more of the top down mindset and push for any of your listeners. And Trent, you've had personal experience with our Chief Audit Executive Adesh Gandhi. If you're listening and you want to Follow him on LinkedIn, check him out as well. But you'll get a sense just from a few posts alone on how he approaches innovation. Sort of a technology powered mindset, human driven yet at dtcc. And that ethos sort of resonates within a lot of the work that we do and how we prioritize, really. Our book of work, the first award that we won last year, just to give a sense of how that came about, right? That was, I'll say, a weekend of me putting together a very simple solution to a problem that we had around digital adoption. So how do we encourage auditors to adopt, you know, our digital tools, technologies, methods, practices, etc. To be really more digital forward and digital centric. And so it was me putting together a solution, pitched it to our three levels of management over the course of two days. Everyone just said, yes, yes, yes, that, you know, the last line was a dash, rolled it out the following week and then it basically, you know, really snowballed into something that worked out really well for our department, saw really great engagement around it and that was the basis for why we won the award last year. So, you know, just to give a sense for how the idea came about, how it was incubated, how it was developed and how it was actually deployed, this year was a little different. So, you know, as Andrew mentioned, we won the award in the trailblazer category. So it wasn't one specific project. It was actually a multitude of things that we do at dtcc, internal audit that allow productivity to see, hey, there's a pattern and a trend here. But among all of those, we had about six or so entries for this year's innovation award. Among all of those, I would say the key thing was again, the mindset and the tone at the top. As an example, one of the entries was an audit ally spotlight that the idea was actually credit to one of our new hires right out of college. She said, hey, you know, we spent a lot of time writing reports and highlighting what our oddities didn't do. Right. What if we actually created a sort of social media spotlight on what our oddities did well during the audit and you know, the relationship that we, you know, we kind of formed, etc, and how our experience was working with each other, literally pushed this idea to Adesh said, great, love it, let's move. You know, within a few weeks she had a mock up of what it would look like. So it's, it's, you know, you've got the top of the department talking to somebody who's very junior on, on the, the tone pole. But direct access to management and senior leadership. Right. So you're, you're cutting through a lot of layers of, you know, naysayers or even, okay, let's refine that a little further. Take the raw idea, senior leadership. Here are the raw ideas. Let the people try them out. Maybe they fail and that's okay. So one is that tone at the top and kind of Senior leadership kind of getting access to these ideas and then intertwined with that is, you know, something you mentioned is this culture of experimentation. Right. So this idea of the audit Ally spotlight, if it worked, great. If it didn't work, okay, that's all right too. Maybe we tried a couple and it didn't really pan out, but we experimented and now we know that, okay, this didn't work out. We'll learn something different for the next time we try something. So I do want to say experimentation is also a big part of our culture. I'll do a real quick plug here for dtcc. Actually, we host our own annual AI hackathon that is open to the industry. And in fact, earlier this year we had a dedicated track to internal audit. So if you are an internal audit or audit in general in the industry and you're saying, hey, you know, I'd love to experiment with AI tools. I don't have them at my workplace and I, you know, I don't have the financial capabilities to shell out, you know, money for cloud code or whatever it is. Look out for our DTCC AI hackathon. It's an annual event. We're going to run another one next year. We actually give access to all participants to the latest and greatest tech stack around AI. And it's free to participate. You can go in, you can create whatever you want, low no code tools as well, so you don't have to be a developer. And it's an excellent way of seeing, if nothing, what your peers and audit are working on. We had some amazing solutions that people put together. We had about 20 teams participate across many companies. But this was it, right? This was a culture of experimentation. In fact, one of the solutions that we developed in DTC through the DTCC team, we're now going to take that back and build in house with our IT partners. So this was experimentation, now converting into production, application or deployment using real data, company data. And so we're excited to see what comes out of that. So those are two things. Mindset in terms of senior leadership and experimentation and kind of coupling them together, perfect.
- [28:13]
Trent Russell
I appreciate that because the mindset thing I always have to follow up on that is because some people, however, you develop a mindset. For me, it's mostly through reading books. Like I have a topic. Let's just say the more books I read on that, the more I start to develop a mindset around that. Which is kind of difficult with AI because by the time the book is published, you're like, well, that doesn't work.
- [28:31]
Arpit Shah
Anymore.
- [28:32]
Trent Russell
It's like, it's already too old. I mean there's literally like the leading AI agent book. And I read it and it was something about like, you know, if you do this in AI, it won't work. And I went, I don't think that's true anymore. And I went and did it and it did work. And I went, yep, that's already old. Anyway. So I always try to get like from the mindset side, like, okay, you had that mindset, that's great. But how can people tactically, practically, what's a process to be implemented? And so even just, even just going, hey everybody, you get an hour, two hours, whatever, or just, even if you don't want to put a, a box on it, go, if you have an idea, go run with it. Like stuff doesn't even take that long to mock up anymore. So just like go do it. And if it works, great and if we see value, we'll keep running with it. The one I would say if you
- [29:13]
Arpit Shah
don't have an idea. Sorry, I would say if you, if you don't have an idea, ask your friendly AI assistant. Hey, what are some quick win ideas that I could try out in my environment and you know, see what it comes back with. There's no arm in, in asking that question. All you get is some text readings.
- [29:29]
Trent Russell
Yeah, the, the one follow up I had for you because people are listening might go, okay, that's cool that the junior new person basically had the ear of the cae, but my team is X big and I can't do that. Whatever. Can you add some context? I know Adesh did when he was on the, when we did his episode also. But context in terms of size of the team and really I know the answer, but I want people to know that like hey leaders, you need to be able to take feedback or take these ideas from the brand new college grad or the 30 year vet. Like it doesn't matter where you sit in the hierarchy, but so just context for people listening. What does the shape of the team look like?
- [30:06]
Arpit Shah
So we have anywhere from 95 ish to 100 people in internal audit at DTCC. The company itself is about 6 to 8,000 individuals. And within our audit department somewhere about 65 to 70 are dedicated to audit execution. And the remaining form up sort of our leadership team, our support teams like professional practices, data analytics, et cetera. And we do have a dedicated team to data analytics. So we have about seven people in that group as well. And so those are the folks that are you Know, cranking us sort of the analytics and automation solutions, but also in general, again, along the mindset, you know, we. We approach data analytics as sort of a federated model. So we also have a training, digital literacy training program that we've rolled out to all our auditors to say, all right, you have to be at a minimum, this much, you know, sort of literate, if you will, in. In digital and data, you know, as part of DTCC audit. So that's, that's kind of how we approach and our, you know, our size.
- [31:11]
Andrew Strothers Kennedy
Okay.
- [31:11]
Trent Russell
And I think I forget the number, but it's something like the overwhelming majority of internal audit departments. On average, there's less than seven. And so you going, hey, we have basically, let's just call it a hundred. The point I'm trying to make is for 99% of internal audit leaders, if you're saying, well, I have too many other things going on, I don't think you have much of an excuse. Like, clearly you can see the benefits of this in that mindset.
- [31:39]
Arpit Shah
I would say with smaller teams, it's even easier, if not to have access at all levels. I think that's the beauty of it. I came from an organization that was 300 auditors, you know, and. And that was really hard to get, you know, leadership access. Right. But. But here it's a. It's a different story. Definitely agree.
- [31:56]
Trent Russell
Clearly see the benefits of that. So hats off to a dash there. Okay, we're gonna start to wrap up the show. Andrew, I'm gonna throw it to you first. I'm gonna give you the microphone. Stage is yours. What do you want to leave the audience with?
- [32:12]
Andrew Strothers Kennedy
Well, I think lean in to the moment that we're in. It really is like an exciting and dynamic time to be doing what we're doing. So I would say have a thirst for learning and really lean into everything that's happening right now in our profession and in all of the adjacent areas, there's so many opportunities to do cool things and to make a difference and to really kind of help shape the future. I'm going to fumble on this quote, but I heard it something along this recently is like, the best way to predict the future is to create it. Something like that. I think we have a tremendous opportunity to kind of shape the future of our profession, but that requires us to have that thirst for learning, to lean in, to challenge the status quo and to kind of drive and then just like, more broadly, you know, be cool, be kind, have fun with what you do at home and at work. Right. I think if we do those three things consistently, then we might all be a bit kind of happier day in, day out. So that's my closing. Trent, very nice.
- [33:20]
Trent Russell
Thanks, Andrew. Arpit, we'll let you close this out fully for the show. What do you want to leave the audience with?
- [33:25]
Arpit Shah
I have three things because I always over deliver. First, lead with empathy, Lead with kindness for sure. Second, it is really exciting to be an internal audit at this time. There was a time when I couldn't have said that, but I think there is transformation happening right now and you can either be a part of it or you can choose to stick your head in the sand and not want to be a part of it. Both are right. One will come out probably ahead of the other in terms of a mindset. If you are on the fence about using AI for multitude of reasons, I would say there's no better way than just fire up your tool of choice or all of them and just jump right into it. Ask very innocuous, mundane questions or have conversations with it. I think the more you use it, the more you'll see the capabilities. I'm still discovering new capabilities each day. And by the way, I don't pay personally for any AI service. I just haven't come around to it yet for sure. But I'm sure that's going to, you know, take part of my wallet in the future. But you know, again, you can, you can still do a lot with it, even without, you know, without paying for it. And you can have, you know, great conversations, great ideas. The last thing I'll say is don't shoot for perfection. First, you could. I always love to think about things and problems as a crawl, walk and run approach. I'm borrowing this from, you know, other folks who have, who use this cliche. But you always have to think about what's the crawl first, what does that look like for me, my organization, my team, and then what does the walk look like? And by the, by the time you get to the walk, the run equation may have changed altogether and that's okay. But the realization here is that you're never going to hit that perfect solution on day one. You're going to start with something imperfect and that's totally fine. And as leadership, you have to be open to an imperfect solution to start. And then you know that you're only going to iterate and build on that so that that iteration from a crawl to a walk to a run is really, I think, the key to help organizations and teams of any size really succeed. So. So, you know, that's what I'd love to leave the audience with.
- [35:42]
Podcast Host/Producer
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 we'd really appreciate that. 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.
- [36:15]
Trent Russell
Thank you all. Have a great one.