The Internal Auditor Whisperer's First Law of Internal Auditing: 80% is Good Enough.

This is a very powerful, but simple concept, that’s easy to dismiss.

Don’t. It will provide more value to you over your career than almost any other auditing strategy.

Here it is again.

Don’t be perfect. Don’t even try to be perfect.

80% is good enough in 80% of your work.

This concept is going to set some auditor’s and audit manager’s hair on fire. It will curve their spine and grow hair on the back of their hands. It will not compute.

They are too used to thinking in a very safe, do-what-everyone-else-does, sort of way.

That’s why you keep these lessons to yourself. If you’re standing too close to your audit manager and try to explain this concept, they may explode and take you with them in the process.

Let’s dig into this concept.

Attempt at perfection does not equal perfect. It equals:

· procrastination; or

· over time and over budget; or

· never finishing; or

· failure.

While you were trying to be perfect, others were getting jobs up and down, on time and on budget.

While you were:

· Making sure that you had every possible audit test in your audit plan;

· Making sure you had every possible question for your interviews;

· Interviewing every possible person;

· Including every possible bit of information in your memos of discussion;

· Perfecting your spreadsheets with all of the bells and whistles;

· Perfecting your workpapers to ensure every one of the 400 documents was flawless; and

· Making sure every word in your report was perfect…

While you were doing all of that, something else was going on.

· Audit programs were completed;

· Tests were conducted;

· Issues were identified;

· Reports were issued; and

· Audits were closed…

And all of them had findings, good reports, and came in on budget.

And you know what else?

No one saw any difference between your report and those reports.

It’s true that your manager commented on how nice your workpapers looked, but she said that only after she felt she had to, because she just chewed you out for going over budget.

80% is good enough.

You already know this intuitively.

For example, if you’ve ever created something; a design, a drawing, a painting, a woodworking project, a sandcastle…

…you put in the 80% and got there relatively quickly.

But then you just had to make it perfect. So you spent hours trying to do that last 20%. In fact, 80% of your time went into that last 20%.

In terms of delivering an audit, what sense does that make?

You just wasted an enormous amount of time that could have been spent on the next audit, or delivering more value for your clients.

How should it be done?

We cover this in detail in our course: Advanced Internal Auditor Training: The Missing Manual.

For now, I want you to meditate on this concept.

Think about:

· How you’re applying your time;

· What you are really getting out of your journey to ‘perfection’.

· When you turned in that document that you spent all of that time perfecting; did anyone notice?

· When you turned in that document that was good, but not ‘perfect’, did anyone notice?

· Did that 80% document have any more comments or edits than your ‘perfect’ document?

· How much more time did you spend on that ‘perfect’ document and what was your ROI?

· What about on audit tests? Did anyone notice your work on your ‘perfect’ audit test? When compared to your ‘good’ audit test, what was your ROI? How much more did you get out of it compared with the extra time that you put into it?

· What if you spent all of that ‘perfect’ time and put it into other critical tasks? How much more could you accomplish? How much would you really be losing?

You get the idea.

Bottom line: 80% is good enough. Don’t perfect; don’t even try to be perfect

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.