One of the pet peeve of an Internal Auditor is “Management do not listens”. Majority of the internal auditors to all internal auditors at the beginning of their career, always feels and complaint to their fellow auditors that management do not care.
Over the years I realized that “Management do listens, if you go to them with data.” Here data does not mean an exception, but a case built to support your opinion.
Let me illustrate this with example.
A.Convincing management to get additional insurance policies.
In a company business was pressing the risk manager to procure certain risk policies as their client demanded the same. Company had a policy to push back to business to take it up with clients as the specified insurance policies were not applicable.
This newly appointed risk manager while vetting contracts for risk and insurance requirement noted that almost every alternate contract under negotiation is asking for these policies. He made a list of contracts, insurance demands and taken it to management. Management had decided to procure those licenses as earlier times exceptional requirements had now become norms.
B. Preventing Misuse of IOU facility.
In a company, employees were allowed to take IOUs. Employee used to take IOUs and many times used to rollover the IOUs. When Internal Audit tried to bring this to management attention they ignored it.
However looking at the amount involve, Internal Audit had decided to build a case. Internal Audit had taken past 1 years IOUs, their rollover, number of times rollover, number of IOUs in a month and so on. IA had tabulated this data and presented the case. Once management had reviewed the case, they had decided to come heavily on misuse of IOU facility. IOU had been stopped and employee were asked to take loan and pay interest on the same.
Lesson learned:
- When you are raising an issue, if its backed up by data, management listens and act.
- If you take a transaction and ask management to act, they will ignore as there are always some exception.
Call for action:
Inputs/ comments/ suggestion: I welcome inputs/ comments / suggestions from readers on how to approach this issue. Feel free to correct me, educate me.
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(Disclaimer: The views expressed constitute the opinion of the author and the author alone; they do not represent the views and opinions of the author ’s employers, supervisors, nor do they represent the view of organizations, businesses or institutions the author is, or has been a part of.)