2017

Uber, the ride-sharing service that has been the darling of the upstart business world, recently suffered through a brutal series of reputational hits. By any standard, the list of miscues was a public relations nightmare: allegations of sexual harassment from a former engineer; firing of a new vice president for similar allegations at his former place of employment; a lawsuit alleging theft of driverless car technology; and an embarrassing video surfacing of Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick berating — get this — an Uber driver.

Did I mention a second vice president resigned just as questions of the company’s culture and business practices were being raised?…

When everyone shouts, no one listens. That truism is more relevant today than ever. From politics to social media, the prevailing approach to discourse is to shout down or vilify those who disagree. It seems the art of persuasion has fallen out of favor. But internal auditors cannot allow themselves to be caught up in the fervor of de rigueur intransigence.

In order to effect positive change in organizations, we must make those on the receiving end of our recommendations and reports more open, comfortable, and amenable to what we have to say. Internal auditors must embrace the art of persuasion.…

Like many chief audit executives, when I was leading an internal audit function, I periodically found management and the board questioning whether internal audit’s resources should be reduced. Whenever that happened, I used the occasion as a call to action to do two things: (1) redouble my efforts to communicate the value we bring to the organization, and (2) examine the efficiency and effectiveness of the internal audit operation itself.

The second initiative was important, because if reductions in resources were levied, I needed to mitigate the impact on the value we delivered by ensuring we were as efficient as we would expect to find other operating units in the organization.…

U.S. President Donald Trump has taken the world by storm. From tough talk and bold action on immigration and trade to media skirmishes and promises to dismantle the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Trump administration has served notice it plans to shake things up.

Trump’s promises to drastically roll back regulations, renegotiate trade deals, and more are creating unease about their implications for internal auditors. But before we can pass judgment on whether the Trump era will be good or bad for internal auditing, we should take a step back and assess a number of factors.

First, we cannot yet predict the level of deregulation that the administration will achieve, how quickly it will happen, or its impact on the audit plan.…

I have been thinking of late about a common expression in America that comes from the classic television show, “Dragnet.” The protagonist of the gritty police series, Sgt. Joe Friday, is forever linked to the expression, “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Nowadays, it seems getting just the facts is easier said than done. The debate emanating from Washington, D.C., about “alternative facts” and “fake news” has served as fodder for the media, political pundits, and late-night talk show hosts. But it should be particularly troubling to anyone who works in internal auditing. One of the fundamentals of our profession is communicating the results of our audits in a clear, concise, and objective manner, and there should never be disagreements over our final reports when it comes to the facts.…

It seems that everywhere we look in the world, trust is in short supply. Investors struggle to maintain trust in capital markets, citizens find it difficult to trust elected leaders, the political left doesn’t trust the political right and vice versa, and mistrust between traditional nation-state adversaries seems to be making an unwelcome comeback.

But trust, defined as “the firm belief in the reliability​​​​, truth, ability,​ or strength of someone or something,” is what gets both business and governments through the most challenging times.

This may appear off base at a time when partisan politics and a rift in the American psyche have created uncertainty and tension.…

Last month’s announcement that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus would cease operations after more than 146 years generated significant reaction across the United States.

For those who had relentlessly protested the use of live animals by the circus, the announcement was met with celebration.

For millions of others, the announcement was met with sadness and nostalgia. They felt that yet another iconic American institution was going away, and that they would never have the opportunity to pass along the magical experience of attending the circus to their children and grandchildren.

While I empathized with the range of emotions being shared, I also couldn’t help but smile.…

I have covered many topics relating to the day-to-day workings of internal auditing over the eight years that I have been writing this blog. The dynamic nature of business and the profession’s evolving role within the organization have made it relatively easy to keep the issues topical and fresh.

February 10^th marks the eighth anniversary of Chambers on the Profession. When I wrote that first blog, I had only been on the job as The IIA’s CEO for about four weeks. American and global economic uncertainty hung in the air like a stale fog. A sense of crisis and pessimism permeated the world in ways not seen since the onset of the Great Depression almost 70 years earlier.…

The U.S. Department of Justice announced this month indictments against executives at Volkswagen, air-bag manufacturer Takata, and three global banks involved in foreign currency trading. This bold action, which reinforced earlier warnings from U.S. regulators that executives and board members will be held personally accountable for wrongdoing, likely sent shudders across corporate C-suites around the world.

Just last week, Samsung’s top executive was kept in a holding cell while a court deliberated whether to issue a warrant for his arrest. Ultimately no arrest warrant was issued for Lee Jae-yong, but he remains the subject of a special prosecutor’s investigation relating to a scandal that led to the impeachment of South Korean President Park Geun-hye.…