Hack Everything You Do As An Internal Auditor

Problem: Many internal auditors have been trained to think and operate like robots. They’ve been trained by others who were trained by others before them, to think and operate like everyone else; like everyone has always done things.

Solution: But there’s a better way: Hack everything you do.

What do I mean by ‘hack’?

I mean learn how to accomplish the same task, more efficiently and effectively.

This is one of the most important skills you can ever develop in your internal audit career. There are countless ways of accomplishing any task. At the same time, it’s mind-boggling how many organizations and internal auditors have always done things a certain way, with little thought given to why it’s done that way, and whether there might be a better way.

How do you do that? How does this apply to internal auditing?

There’s almost an endless number of ways. Here are a few examples to get you started.

1. Use First Principles thinking.

2. Learn from people with years of experience. They have many hacks. They just don’t tell anybody.

3. Observe.

4. Question everything. Challenge the status quo.

Examine everything you do in the audit cycle from planning to fieldwork, to reporting to quality review, and everything beyond and in-between. Everything. Then ask yourself:

1. Why do you do it that way?

2. What are we trying to accomplish?

3. What are all of the possible ways to accomplish the objective or task?

4. How could it be done more efficiently?

Here’s an example.

I watched internal auditors, internal audit managers, and audit executives conduct meetings; internal meetings, and meetings with auditees. I noticed that at least 80% of the meetings were unproductive, to say the least. Generally, they were a complete waste of my time.

So, I hacked them.

I applied two hacks.

The first thing I did was identify the 80% that was nonsense, and got rid of it, or severely limited it. This resulted in getting everything I needed from the meetings in 20% of the time. That’s a huge time suck and savings that I then applied to auditing.

The other hack I used, was when I was forced to attend someone else’s waste of time meeting, I brought my laptop and worked the whole time. This is an art form that you’ll develop over time. I.e.,

· you’ll learn how to do this while always being ready to jump into the meeting when called on; and

· purposely making some ‘value added’ statement periodically to let everyone know you’re paying attention; and

· you’ll also learn how to NOT look like you’re working on your own stuff, but rather taking notes and looking things up related to the content of the meeting.

I could give you similar examples for almost everything an internal auditor does throughout the audit cycle. If you develop the ‘hacking mindset’ you can find many more hacks for research, presentations, meetings, note taking, writing, and more.

Summary

· Learn to hack everything you do as an internal auditor, and gain efficiencies, effectiveness, and an advantage over your competition.

· Hacking involves finding ways to accomplish tasks more effectively and efficiently.

· Apply the hacking mindset by:

• utilizing First Principles thinking,
• learning from experienced colleagues,
• being observant, and
• challenging the status quo.

· Examine every aspect of the audit cycle, and then ask:

• Why do we do it this way?
• What are we trying to achieve?
• What other methods could we use?
• How could it be done more efficiently?

Check out our Newsletter “Secrets of Millionaire Internal Auditors — Mastering the Game of Internal Auditing & Getting Rich While Doing It” for street-smarts, in-the-trenches internal auditing hacks, techniques and strategies that you won’t get anywhere else.