Group Training

Working on an audit certification is stressful, time-consuming, and expensive, but is it worth the effort? This presentation breaks down the most common certifications by cost, effort, and potential benefits so you can make the right decision for yourself.

The IIA regularly publishes guidance on the skills we all need to be competent and proficient auditors. They do this because the skills we need are constantly shifting. We are required to keep up with technical skills and soft skills. If we work together as a team, we can help each other gain the skills and confidence we need to succeed!

Organizations face periods when risk levels surge far beyond the norm. Economic uncertainty, disruptive technologies, geopolitical instability, rapid organizational change, and large-scale operational disruptions all place extraordinary pressure on internal controls, governance, and risk management. These “high-risk” conditions demand an audit function that is agile, focused, and capable of delivering assurance when it matters most.

This course provides a practical framework for conducting audits during extraordinary times. Participants learn how to rapidly reassess risk, prioritize critical processes, adjust audit procedures, and communicate emerging threats to leadership with clarity and urgency. The session covers how to evaluate controls under stress, how to identify gaps created by disruption, and how to tailor audit approaches when evidence quality or process stability is compromised.

Impact, Likelihood, and Velocity are our assessments' three most common risk metrics. Among the many lessons learned from COVID-19, risk velocity may be one of the most important, especially in emerging risks. Emerging risks often catch us off guard, which can spread through an organization with fantastic speed.

Your report is boring, and no one wants to read it! Internal auditors spend weeks performing an audit, but in the end, others only see the audit report. It is time to rethink the format you have been using.  Are you including meaningful content, visuals, and an overall theme? The last thing we want to hear is that the report was boring. In this presentation, we will tear apart standard report templates and improve them!

Internal auditors are supposed to remain independent from their work organization. We usually do this by establishing reporting lines directly to an audit committee. However, the reality is that we still work in this organization. We still must ride the elevator with coworkers in other departments and get paid for working at our jobs. Because of our unique position, we often face an ethical dilemma at the end of every audit. Management wants to issue a "clean" report, while auditors need to report unbiased facts highlighting the organization's risks. Ultimately, we must decide if we will keep our reports intact or bend to pressure from management to sanitize the language before it gets to senior leadership.

What will an internal audit look like in the next 5 years? In this event, we will explore areas most likely to change in the next few years: freelance auditing, agile auditing, dependence on AI, and reliance on the other lines of defense.

We combine subjective measures with past audit results and data from different systems for our risk assessments. Then we tack on CPEs of interviews with management that only adds more subjectivity. When I push deeper and ask who designed this risk assessment process, very few auditors can answer. Usually, someone who left the organization years before or an external consultant recommended the approach. When it takes so much effort to complete the assessment that it takes away from the actual audits we could be working on, is it time to admit that our risk assessment process is too complicated?

You've gathered lots of data from your audit processes, but now you need to use the data to tell a story to your audit committee. Designing these presentations is critical for leading audit departments. To help audit leaders develop compelling presentations, we will review the results of the surveys from The IIA to ensure we are meeting the audit committee's expectations. We will share trends, best practices, critical success factors, and tips for including the most relevant data. The presenter will then provide real-world examples showing how to use data to create trending reports and data analysis for inclusion in audit committee presentations using tools you already have, like Excel and PowerPoint

Can you imagine auditing without having to deal with issuing time-consuming audit reports? The truth is you don't need to write a report. The Standards never actually required us to do any writing. This presentation will discuss modern alternatives to the formal reporting we have all dreaded. You will understand what we must communicate during an audit and how to get it done better.

The presentation is designed to help auditors and fraud examiners bridge the gap between data analytic theory and application. This presentation aims to discuss the actual world application of simple data analytics to save time, improve efficiency, reduce risk exposure, add value, motivate team members, comply with best practices, detect potential fraud, and create new opportunities.

Sometimes we test controls that don't matter. Designing adequate internal controls can be challenging, especially with the current pace of change. A well-designed internal control system requires us to use judgment when assessing control effectiveness. We need to understand when a control does not address the risks so we don't waste time.

The risk landscape changes constantly, and we must remain vigilant as auditors if we stay ahead of the curve. The top risks for the current year have been impacted heavily by the pandemic, and each of the risks we will cover has a ripple effect as we explore the interrelated aspects of these risks.

Impact, Likelihood, and Velocity are our assessments' three most common risk metrics. Until now, I never fully grasped the meaning and importance of risk velocity. Among the many lessons learned from COVID-19, risk velocity might be among the most critical, especially in emerging risks.