Tales from the audit trenches #3: Why did you become an internal auditor, John?

When time permits, I have decided to share some of what I consider to be the slightly more amusing experiences from my time in the wonderful profession that is internal audit.?

Some of you may recognise some of these stories. I have shared several them previously in person. All are true. Maybe I have changed some of the names of those involved. Maybe not. ?? I have considered our Code of Ethics and have sought to abide by the confidentiality rule and principles throughout. As you would expect. Of course…

Welcome to the third article, or episode if you prefer of… ***gentle fanfare and drum roll*** …tales from the internal audit trenches.

This one is way back at the beginning of my internal audit journey. A real blast from the past if you will. And I have written it now because someone asked me at last week’s wonderful Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors South West Region’s 40th Anniversary in-person Conference (ha ha, yep, a real, in-person Conference, just like the ‘old’ days!) “When are you going to write another one of your tales?”

I had to mumble my apologies and say that I’d been really busy and hadn’t had the time, so here it is now. To make amends.

And I’ve made it a shorter one than the first two, so that it won’t take all of Christmas to read. And I will try to get another drafted for January. All being well, and unless over-gorging on mince (I typed mice initially. There’s a thought) pies gets in the way.

So, forgive me for not writing more of these sooner.

Anyways, onwards!

“So, why did you become an internal auditor, John?” Someone asked me this on a training course last week, so I thought that I should say why. Today.

I am sorry to admit that I wasn’t born to be an internal auditor.

Unlike five (it was four for a long time, but another person I met recently makes it five) internal auditors I know around the world who are second-generation internal auditors. Yep, one or more of their parents was an internal auditor and they followed in the family footsteps! That’s kind of cool. Maybe. Or scary. Or sad. But cool I think, overall.

“What do you want to be little munchkin, when you grow up?”

“I want to be an internal auditor, just like you Mummy/Daddy/Other (delete as appropriate).”

As an aside, my eldest did a three-week paid internship with one of the big four last summer. As an external auditor. He’s now dead to me, of course. They liked him, for some unknown reason, and have offered him a job starting next year when he (hopefully) finishes University.

I digress.

Sadly, like still far too many people, I didn’t know anything about internal audit until I saw the job advertisement one day.

I was working for a UK Government Agency and had been there a couple of years in an operational role. I liked the work I was doing, my immediate colleagues and my leaders, but there was a layer of middle management that frustrated me. I didn’t really rate them and this was causing me some angst. I didn’t really respect them.

So, I began looking for other jobs there at the Agency.

And that was when I saw the job advertisement.

Before joining this Agency, I had worked in south-west London for the Benefits Agency. A completely different organisation. But I really enjoyed it. Part of my role involved undertaking unannounced, weekend visits to check on the status and circumstances of some of our customers. You could call it counter-fraud activity. It was exciting and fun, although I was occasionally a little hungover from the Friday nights out beforehand. I was young and foolish in those days (and am now just older and foolish). I only had rabid dogs set on me once.

So, I had, had some kind of involvement in aspects of our work in the past. And in those days, many, many years ago, internal audit was still a little more inspection-y than it is today, of course.

The job advertisement offered promotion, portable professional qualifications (then the wonderful PIIA and the MIIA too), study leave, a study allowance (kerching!) and a retention bonus after qualifying (double kerching!).

So, I was lured in, as you can see, for all the right reasons!

Dear reader, I would like to say that it was because of some higher calling, or a real desire to enhance and protect organisational value through risk-based blah blah. But I would be lying. That came later.

But to be fair, the work sounded quite fun too. It was varied. It involved ‘doing’ audits, looking at internal controls and checking and stuff. Actually, I can’t really remember much about what the work was about, as it was the promotion, extra pay and study that did for me.

So, I met with the point of contact, the Deputy Head of Internal Audit, and asked a few questions. He was a really nice, open and decent guy. In fact, comparing him to my own middle management, I was really impressed. He sold it to me. And, more importantly, I could see myself working with - or for - him. He was good and that was important for me.

I applied.?

And after due process, I had the interview and was subsequently offered the job as they were looking for two internal auditors. I was told that I was the second choice, but that didn’t bother me. As an aside, the first choice also told me, regularly, that I was the second choice, but apart from that little issue, which was more to do with her own lack of confidence more than anything else, she was a lot of fun and we got on well. I lasted as an internal auditor. She left.

About three months after joining, the brilliant Deputy Head of Internal Audit resigned to move back to the Government Department he used to work in. He wanted a shorter commute.?

I was gutted!

He was one of the main reasons that I had taken the job in the first place, along with the extra pay etc., and I was quite upset. I was only beginning to get to grips with the job and didn’t really know what I was doing yet. And he was abandoning us! The Head of Internal Audit kind of scared me as well, so that made the departure even worse.?

As for our Audit Manager, we called her “The Punisher”, behind her back. Very quietly of course. She was like the Norman Tebbit Spitting Image character. We didn’t like her. However, she was the golden girl of the Head of Internal Audit as she had won both the Charles Duly (PIIA) and Peter Hook (MIIA) prizes from the then IIA UK and Ireland, for examination success. She was the first person to win both, so (some) respect to her. But she was the devil incarnate to us.?

(She left internal audit a few years later to move into an operational role with the Agency, in London. And then, shortly afterwards she passed away, far too young, from cancer. There wasn’t an obituary for her in the Internal Auditing (now Audit and Risk) magazine, despite her being the first double-prize winner. A shame.)

So, things rapidly took a turn for the worse for me and my nascent internal audit career.

I will cover the consequences of this in a future tale. In the one to be entitled, “You’re a disruptive whinger, Mr Chesshire!”

But for now, that is how I became an internal auditor.?

Not necessarily an amusing tale, but a true one. I fell into it like so many of the great internal auditors I have worked with over the years.?

I can’t help but think that we still need to be doing far more as a profession to raise awareness, educate and market both us, and our role, than we do today.?

Can we really be relying on luck and happenstance for recruitment?!

That doesn’t feel like an effective strategy. Especially given that so many internal audit teams have vacancies and traditional recruitment is often unsuccessful in filling these gaps. And yes, that is why the apprenticeship route is a great initiative and I'm delighted to see that it is really boosting the internal auditor pipeline in participating organisations. A very welcome development indeed.

But do we all need to be doing more??

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I hope you enjoyed this third tale from the internal audit trenches and that it has perhaps made you remember and think a little about why you became an internal auditor in the first instance.?

I’m so glad that I did and, despite the inevitable bumps along the way (more about some of them in future tales) I’m so lucky to have enjoyed about 85% of the internal auditing stuff I have done since!?

I hope that you have too.

Have a happy, healthy and restful festive break.

Stay well!

Chessh