What skills do you develop in audit?

Those entering the internal audit and compliance professions often wonder what they need to do to succeed in their new careers. There is a lot to learn. In fact, the general advice is to become a lifelong learner. This is because there is constant pressure from within the department and from clients to understand complex subject areas quickly so they can be reviewed competently, efficiently, and effectively.

The following are nine skills and actions essential for success.

1. Oral Communications

You will need to present the results of the work done to your team leader and others within the department. Later, you will also need to present the results of your work to the client, who may not be too enthused with your presentation of reportable conditions. Since you need to explain what you did, what you found, why it matters, and what are some possible ways to solve those issues, public speaking skills are very important for audit and compliance professionals. This also includes the ability to deal constructively with confrontation and remain cool, calm, and collected while handling difficult questions.

2. Written Communications

Auditors write a lot. You will be required to take copious notes during meetings with clients, prepare test plans, write narratives, document walkthroughs, and write e-mails and memos to operational and senior management. Also, after you verbally explain the nature of the issues found during fieldwork, you need to write that down clearly, concisely, and accurately in a report for the board.

3. Personal Development

Auditors are expected to be competent in their line of work and engage in lifelong learning. In short, you were not done learning when you graduated from your college or university. In fact, you are highly encouraged to obtain professional certifications, which require passing exams. Then after you obtain these certifications, you will be required to obtain a minimum of 40 hours of continuing education per year, so don’t forget your study skills because you will need them to succeed in this line of work and remain knowledgeable. If you decide that furthering your education through advanced degrees is the way to go rather than through certifications, there are many choices available as well and they will be worth the effort, especially if your employer will help cover some or all the expenses. Through it all, remember to develop coping strategies to deal with adversity and remain resilient and optimistic. You may fail during your journey. It is a part of life, but success is not determined by how many times we fall, but by how many times we get up.

4. Interpersonal Development

Technical and personal development is one thing, but you will likely work on your projects in teams and interact frequently with your clients. You will need to communicate and interact with others individually and in groups. These interactions may be tense at times so skills like teamwork, conflict resolution, listening, questioning, understanding body language, and emotional intelligence are essential for success.

5. Goal Setting

Aim for work-life balance by setting personal and professional goals. These life goals should be SMARTER (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Reviewed, Time-Bound, Extend your capabilities, and be Relevant). But setting goals is just the beginning. Make sure you are committed to them and align your daily actions with your goals. It is a good idea to write them down, share them with those most significant in your life, and ask them to hold you accountable for following through on them.

6. Time Management

Develop time management skills so you work smarter, and not only harder. It is important to manage priorities, set deadlines, and avoid procrastination so you accomplish your short- and long-term goals. There are many manual and technology-enabled time management tools, so take advantage of the options available to you. Effective time management will help you reduce the number of last-minute emergencies and achieve a greater work-life balance. Everyone gets 24 hours a day, the difference is what you do with those hours, so make the most of your time.

7. Stress Management

The auditing profession tends to be stressful. It is true that most jobs are stressful these days, but auditors review the decisions other people make and the things they do. As a result, your clients sometimes don’t like what you do. Even though it is nice to be liked, in the audit profession, the goal is to be respected. Developing the ability to handle the stresses that your job produces is essential for creative thought, building strong client relationships, providing superior results, and achieving long-term happiness.

8. Critical Thinking

An essential aspect of our jobs is the ability to analyze facts to form a judgment. You’ll face complex subjects, you must review volumes of data, documents, and records, interview multiple individuals, and must make sense of it all while working under tight deadlines. You are expected to be objective, rational, and unbiased and possess strong decision-making, reasoning, reading, analysis, and problem-solving skills. Critical thinking is essential to understand the scope of every engagement, determine what information you need to achieve your objectives, evaluate the evidence obtained, and provide an opinion about the quality of internal controls.

9. Career Management

The audit profession is changing. What you audit, how you review things, the tools you use, and the ways you present the results are changing. Along the way, you will probably move horizontally into a similar job, diagonally into another one with more responsibilities, or vertically through promotions. You may change organizations and even industries. But through it all, you need to take ownership and control of your career. Choose a direction, think about the next job you want, and the one after that, and go for it.

If you do these things you will become a powerhouse as you advance in your career. Plan, prepare, get organized, work, evaluate and reflect on your progress, and course-correct if necessary. There is a bright future in internal audit, compliance, and related fields and if you are curious and want to learn how organizations really work, you are in the right place.

Interested in learning more about this topic? Dr. Murdock teaches High-Impact Skills for Developing and Leading Your Audit Team and Managing the Internal Audit Department. Check out AuditProTV for online, on-demand courses. It’s audit learning for life.

Dr. Hernan Murdock, CIA, CRMA, serves as the VP of Content and Programming at ACI Learning. As a certified internal auditor, risk management expert, and instructor, Dr. Murdock has seen up close how giving and receiving feedback is an essential element in every internal auditors’ development. In this article, he shares the best practices that can help internal auditors more effectively give, receive, and adopt feedback.

This week we take a look at how auditors have grown their careers historically through the gradual aquisition of certain key skillsets and attributes.

Critical Skills to Enhance Your Audit Career Path

What makes a great auditor?

What’s the perfect career path for an auditor?

Twenty years ago, answers to those questions were undoubtedly much different than they are today. Back then, a solid grasp of the ins and outs of internal audit could land you high on the career ladder.

In 2020, likely less so.

When 49% of current work activities could be automated using technology, it is ultimately the softer skills that will distinguish audit professionals in a highly demanding and rapidly-changing landscape. Want to improve the career path you are on as an auditor?

Here are the top 9  skills you should master today in order to help your audit career path grow:

Critical Thinking: Critical thinking skills are important for an audit career path. This type of reasoning requires that they step outside of their own judgments and biases in order to consider all perspectives, question the validity of each, and reach a conclusion.

As the Global Internal Audit Common Body of Knowledge (CBOK) study notes, “Critical thinking is the most sought-after skill by internal audit hiring managers, but generally, it is learned on the job through dedicated feedback and coaching from internal audit leaders.” 

Initiative

In any profession, employers want to know that their employees are eager to learn and develop. They value people who go above and beyond expectations to advance themselves and their knowledge.

For internal auditors, the willingness to take initiative and ownership over their own success is crucial. Passionately pursuing professional designations, certifications, and Continuing Professional Education (CPE) proves that they are not content to rest on their laurels, but instead, are eager to learn and evolve along with the profession.

Communication skills

Case in point: in a 2016 survey conducted by Workforce Solutions Group, communication skills were the top demand of hiring companies, yet two out of three employers cited a lack of these interpersonal skills in their job applicants. This serves as proof that internal auditors who are strong communicators will set themselves apart from any job competition.

“Internal auditors need to possess excellent communication skills in order to succeed and advance in the changing, complex international global marketplace,” writes Dr. Gene Smith, an accounting professor at Eastern New Mexico University, in an article published in Managerial Auditing Journal. “Auditors utilize communication skills in almost every situation they encounter.” 

Curiosity

As mentioned previously, the most successful internal auditors are not fulfilled with the status quo—they have an eye for continuous process improvement and how they can advance the profession in a business that is changing at an accelerated rate. Internal auditors should seek to not only refine their own skills, but also to understand, adapt to, and leverage emerging technologies.

Curiosity also means that these internal audit practitioners ruthlessly dig into problems in pursuit of an answer and solution. They are excited about a mystery, rather than being discouraged by it. “We want people who have a passion for truly understanding the business and a knack for remaining inquisitive within environments that can change on a weekly or even daily basis,” explains Kelly Barrett, Vice President of Internal Audit and Compliance for Home Depot.

“An open-minded auditor is nonpartisan and able to see the good practices, as well as the improvement areas,” writes Amanda Bradley, GlaxoSmithKline’s Director of Risk and Strategy. “This supports the development of the internal control framework, and means that the auditor is able to challenge on the best corrective actions to put in place because they have seen what good looks like.”

Healthy Skepticism

“[Skepticism] is an attitude that includes a questioning mind and a critical assessment of the appropriateness and sufficiency of audit evidence,”. “It requires being alert to conditions that may indicate possible misstatement due to error, neglect, or fraud, and a critical assessment of audit evidence.”

The best internal auditors trust nothing when reviewing financial documents and they conduct each review with a discerning eye and a high degree of vigilance, regardless of the specific circumstances.

Business acumen

In the 2018 North American Pulse of the Internal Audit Profession survey conducted by the IIA’s Audit Executive Center, business acumen was ranked as one of the most desirable skills by CAEs. Today’s practitioners need to know not only the numbers, they also need to know what role they play and why they matter to the business. Internal auditors do the legwork.

In short, professionals with the strongest career paths do not just do their jobs with excellence, but they also connect the dots to articulate the true business impact—which is the information that matters most to other stakeholders.

Empathy

For those on the receiving end, audits can be nerve-wracking, and skilled internal auditors must know how to empathize with the emotions of their clients or stakeholders while still maintaining their composure and remaining prudent. Not only does this competency set internal audit practitioners apart and allow them to deliver their findings in the most effective way, but it also leads to higher quality audits.

Executive presence

“Internal audit leaders must inform, educate, and influence stakeholders as well as earn their trust,” explains a release by a Big 4 firm. According to a recent study from PwC, 9 out of 10 very effective internal audit leaders excel in demonstrating executive presence.

Cross-functional training

As the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants states, auditors must “have an understanding of how laws and regulations affect an audit, not only in terms of the work the auditor is required to do, but also to appreciate the responsibilities of both management and the auditor where laws and regulations are concerned.”

Similarly, internal auditors work with a large amount of financial data, so they need to be equipped with the skills to analyze those numbers. Being able to manage data is a surefire way to stand out in a competitive field and labor market, especially since LinkedIn reports that data science is one of the top 25 most in-demand skills of 2019.

Prepare today to become the auditor of tomorrow

Today, the internal auditing profession is about more than being an investigator—these roles add real value to the business. However, that is far easier to prove if you supplement your technical skills with these in-demand soft skills.

Doing so makes you a better-rounded internal auditing professional, and it also helps you realize that automation isn’t something to fear. In fact, by automating the manual tasks that take time away from more proactive, value-added, and fulfilling activities, you can become the strategic and insightful internal auditor that your organization needs.

Audit International are specialists in the recruitment of Auditors and various Corporate Governance Professionals including Internal Audit, Compliance, IT Audit, Data Analytics etc across Europe and the US.

If you would like to reach out to discuss your current requirements, please feel free to reach us on  Germany-  0049 30217 82920 or Switzerland 0041 4350 830 59

12835 total views, 2 today