Too long; didn't read.

This week I am the guest on Jon Taber, CPA, CIA, CFE, CFF 's excellent podcast, Audit 15 Fun. Jon and I discuss some of my views about clear communications and I give a lot of tips that internal auditors (and other finance professionals) can implement straightaway. Here's a glimpse of the conversation.

When it comes to writing:

• Put the bottom line up front, instead of making the reader hunt around the document looking for the big message
• Write in the active voice because you will have shorter, clearer sentences.

For presentations:

• The presentation is You, not the slide deck
• It's your fault of the audience doesn't listen
• Don't encourage them not to listen to you by giving them lots of text to read
• Using no slides is better than using bad slides (and most people create bad slides).

I also shared some of my pet hates about the format of documents:

• Text documents that are in landscape format but not set in columns
• Reading PDF documents on mobile devices
• Tables and charts that are clutters with borders, etc. Communicate, don't decorate.

You can listen to our conversation on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And, of course, you can also use those apps to follow Jon's podcast and receive every episode.