IIA IC 17 is a Wrap! My Top 10 Reflections
Charlie Puddicombe, MBA, GAICD
Senior Executive - Leader in Governance, Risk Management & Controls
Thank you for coming to my adopted home city of Sydney. It was an honour, privilege and pleasure to host you as the IIA NSW chapter chair/president.
Start with why?
Why reflect? Because I'm writing a book on the Value of Assurance as an investment. My hypothesis is that we can demonstrate (with evidence!) a clear correlation between effective assurance and enhanced organisational performance. This book will be a watershed for our IA profession. What we all need to do is share examples of IA adding tangible strategic, operational and social value at organisations. How we do that is to connect, comment and discuss points of view.
So start now - connect, make a comment (constructive criticism welcome!) and share your point of view.
Objectives
I had three objectives for this conference:
- To meet as many delegates in person as I could, particularly the 300 from NSW.
- To start conversations about IA Data Analytics, Risk Culture and Conduct Risk.
- To tweet (@Puddico1Charlie) and post on LinkedIn throughout the conference.
In summary, this was my best conference ever! Gorgeous weather, a great venue and engaging sessions all contributed. More importantly, I met so many new people as well as renewing connections with friends and colleagues from around Australia and the world. Our presenters and panellists brought the topics of IA Data Analytics, Risk Culture and Conduct Risk to life for me. It was even better to hear diverse experience shared through questions and answers. This added the practical commercial perspective and problem-solving that is the best of Internal Audit. My last objective for this conference is also met; to surpass it, I now welcome you to build our shared connections.
What were your objectives for IIA IC 2017? How did you go towards meeting them?
My Top 10 Takeaways: Leadership, Innovation, Value, Effectiveness
Leadership
1. The importance of our IA role – don’t take that access to senior management, the board and regulator for granted. They have a genuine interest in our point of view.
2. Being courageous in doing the right thing – IA can be the radar that detects signs of potentially serious problems, for example, insolvency. Independent warning from IA protects shareholders, the organisation and company directors too.
3. We have a rich community and legacy at the IIA – it was wonderful to see exam awards for newer members through to life time awards for those that guide our profession.
4. Motivation – we need to take personal responsibility for our path; get involved and volunteer; and, find the right mentor.
Innovation
5. Data Analytics initiates through people and their skills. It ultimately delivers through upgrading our IA reporting to more interactive and informative dashboards.
6. Risk Culture audits. These are not easy but, as Dr Pippa Malmgren told us, the qualitative risks are what CEOs are worried about. First set the framework, then look at your people practices: hiring, training, reward and performance management – at both ends of the spectrum. What behaviours do we want, and what behaviours do we see?
7. Conduct Risk. To me this can easily get conflated with Culture Risk. In my view Conduct is not the behaviours, it is how fairly the customer is treated in the end-to-end product lifecycle. We need a balanced view to frame product “success” and “failure” for all stakeholders, not by elevating corporate and employee rewards to the detriment of customers. This is our social licence to operate in Financial Services.
Value
8. Brand – be the doctor - trust is key, so is the manner when we tell our ‘patient’ the prognosis – whether good or bad.
9. Blockchain – the role of auditing in society is changing. We need to keep up with the technology and appropriate safeguards.
Effectiveness
10. Consider IA in the context of new technologies and the rapidly changing risk profile they bring (e.g. data security, automation and mobile payments).
Unfortunately, we all missed some great sessions too. I would love to hear more about Women in Internal Audit and the Small Internal Audit shops sessions, as these are initiatives that the IIA NSW Chapter has been driving for the last year. What sessions did you enjoy? And how could we make our sessions even better?
Senior Applied AI Scientist
7 年Im going to give the point of view of an outsider here: i.e I'm actually not from this field. I like your point #2 "IA can be the radar that detects signs of potentially serious problems, for example, insolvency. Independent warning from IA protects shareholders, the organisation and company directors too." --- this is good to connect with other executives who may not necessarily understand the benefits, until something happens. On innovation: Many of the processes I've seen can be easily (semi) automated. However, do not fall for the black magic boxes, it is difficult to have a one size fits all. Your #6 actually touches well on this "First set the framework, then look at your people practices: hiring, training, reward and performance management – at both ends of the spectrum. What behaviours do we want, and what behaviors do we see?" The quickest way to move forward in this space is to create a team with complimentary skills set: IA professional, data scientist, analyst. The longer they work in this field, they will see what can & should be automated, and slowly build great products along the way.
National Quality Manager @ DGL (ASX: DGL) | HSEQ Manager | Integrated Management Systems | Internal Audit | Certification Audits for ISO, NATA, TMR, HVNL, HACCP and more | PMIAA | Member AIHS | Member NCSA | Member AIPM
7 年Thanks Charlie. I couldn't make it this year so it's nice to hear what happened. I'll keep an eye out for session recordings.
Executive Leader | Internal Audit | Risk Management
7 年You nailed it with this summary Charlie. From Chris Riddell's future vision to Holly Ransom's 24/7/1, there were so many highlights. It was a great conference. I walked away completely re-energised and with some key learnings ready to be implemented. For me, the key takeaway was that internal audit needs to take a futuristic view on risks to continue to be a value add function and must embrace the technological innovations in analytics/blockchain. Basically, internal audit needs to be agile to be effective in this rapidly changing risk environment. The 'Small Audit Shops' session by Sally Anne Pitt offered guidance on adequate audit coverage and quality assurance given the challenge of limited audit resources. We had a very diverse group of people and heard great insights/tips from attendees from Australia, US, Canada, India, UAE etc. The conversation flowed easily and time was not nearly enough. Lastly, I thought Sam Walsh summed it up well when he said "Internal Audit helps the CEO sleep at night". With such an endorsement from an ex-CEO of a worldwide company (combined with Clare Brady's doctor analogy), I felt there was renewed energy in the room on the value we can add as internal auditors.
Head Of Client Service UK at FundConnect
7 年Congratulations Charlie, I've been following your conference from the UK and a really great reflection to cap it off. It was a privilege to work with you when you were in the UK and for those following you, Charlie isn't just one of the brightest, impressive individuals, he's also a thoroughly nice guy??