When will robots replace the internal auditors??

Last year when I went to GITEX (the biggest technology exhibition in Dubai), I met and took selfies with many robots including the cute and efficient Pepper. But I did not believe then that I may have to go back to Gitex in the next few years to recruit skilled auditors for my team!!! Seems that is the pace with which audit functions are getting automated in this era of digital explosion .

Last week attending the Regional Internal Auditors' conference was more like attending a SciFi event. AI and RPA were being quoted by speakers in every other slide that they were presenting. Surprisingly there were not many people who considered AI (Artificial Intelligence) and RPA (Robotic Process Automation) as mere jargon even among the audience. However I felt a bit alienated despite being proud of my technology lineages. Was it because I felt threatened by the data being presented by speaker after speaker on the chances of Audit and Accounting jobs disappearing in the foreseeable future? (they only differed in the percentage figures varying from 94 to 98% probability!!!). In fact one of the most entertaining speakers I have ever seen in our Audit domain, @AdilBuhariwala drew our attention to the website https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/ which gives a 94% chance that we will lose our jobs to the friendly neighborhood robot! No, that was not what was depressing for me.

My frustration was more from the fact that we are not doing enough to evolve with the changing times. True, the larger audit departments of global companies may already have set up separate analytics divisions to help their auditors extract insights from big data and do their audits in a more meaningful way. Some of them, as I know, have already started experimenting with robotic audit processes. Further, most of the leading consultants have already started giving advisories to internal auditors on RPA.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=212&v=oreDg8BqZbo). However smaller audit departments are yet to find the right budgets and more importantly the right skill sets to explore this wonderful opportunity to become the pioneers in becoming Artificially Intelligent Auditors (Another phrase introduced by #AdilBuhariwala in his talk).

I am completely aligned with the IIA Chairman, Naohiro Mouri, when he says that it is not the WHY or WHAT we do that is going to change, it is the HOW we do auditing that is going to be totally different in the near future. I believe that in my life time, the day will not come when all auditors in my bank's internal audit department will be robots like Pepper (as in the above pic) and the Head of Audit will be another Giant Robot who regularly tightens the nuts and bolts of all the smaller robots . But I will most likely see the day in which my team members will be using robotic processes or even cute physical robots like pepper to do more effective and efficient audits and investigations. After all, it will not be long before the organised fraudsters or even the internal employees with malicious intend start using the potential of Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics and Robotics to perpetrate frauds and we are called in to do the detailed investigation or assess the control environment.

So let us all be prepared by learning new skills of audit surfing as required (Audit Analytics, AI , RPA etc) because the big waves of changes are going to hit the shores all across the world of auditing sooner or later....

#AuditAnalytics , #IIA #InternalAudtior #AuditAutomation