What did your internal audit company hire you to do?

Problem: Many internal auditors spend too much time doing everything but auditing. Or they put equal emphasis on all of their activities when they should be focused on one thing.

Solution: Spend 80% of your time, every day, on auditing. Nothing but auditing. 20% goes to everything else.

You’re spending too much time NOT auditing

Over the course of my career, I learned to get more done in one hour than most other internal auditors in the office got done in a day.

It wasn’t that these other internal auditors weren’t experienced; they were; they got their jobs done. They just hadn’t figured out how to hack the system. They learned how to do things ‘by the book’ from other internal auditors who also hadn’t figured out how to hack the system.

How did I do it?

Every day, I spent 80% of my time on auditing. Nothing else, just auditing. You know auditing? That thing we were hired to do? That meant I was conducting interviews, gathering documents and data, analyzing, writing up tests and reports, and so on. I was kicking a$$; on a mission.

That also meant I was NOT spending more than the bare minimum of time:

· On expense and time reports

· On other administrative activities

· Preparing for meetings

· In meetings

· Shooting the crap with other internal auditors

· Perfecting workpapers

· And so on

I want you to consciously focus on spending your time auditing, and focusing on NOT spending your time on anything else.

For “the everything else” like admin activities, figure out how to hack them. I.e., figure out how you can get those things done in half the time so that you have more auditing time.

How do you do that?

Here are a few thoughts:

1. Try setting aside one hour per week, late in the day for admin activities. With that hour, put on your headphones and focus intently for one hour to knock it all out. Generally, your most productive time will be during your first half of the day. Therefore, you’ll use your less productive time on less important tasks.

2. Is there an administrative assistant in your office? Could they help with certain tasks? Perhaps part of their job description involves making travel reservations or filing expenses reports or other admin activities. If not, buy them lunch once a week and enlist them to help.

3. Avoid almost all meetings like the plague. If you can’t, work during the meetings. Take your laptop and pretend you’re taking notes. But instead, be knocking out audit related activities. Do the same on conference calls.

What else did I do?

Two things.

First, during the first hour of every day, I focused intensely on getting crap done.

Second, I used many of the other techniques that I will teach you in the coming lessons. You take these lessons, techniques, and formulas and ‘stack’ one on top of the other. The result? Greater efficiency and effectiveness.

Yeah, but the quality of the work probably wasn’t as good as the other internal auditors’

I can assure you it was. I generally had more quality findings, and my jobs were always delivered on time and on budget.

Now, did the guy who spent 40% of his time perfecting his workpapers with all sorts of tabs, highlights, legends, and bells and whistles; did he have better workpapers? Perhaps. The workpapers may have had a better appearance, but I can assure you they were no more effective than my workpapers. By effective I mean the workpapers fully supported the audit report and were easily navigated by reviewers.

Did the woman who wrote up a 10-page memo of discussion after a 30-minute interview; did she have a higher quality document, than my one-page bulleted memo? No. Not even close.

I challenge you…

Do an honest self-assessment:

· How productive are you, really?

· How much are you really accomplishing in terms of delivering the audit?

· How efficient are you?

· How much of your time is actually spent on identifying issues, developing those findings, and reporting?

I challenge you to measure yourself against one of the best internal auditors in your office. Covertly, see what she gets done in a day. Spend a week or two watching from a distance.

Then, I want you to figure out how to get done in one hour, what it takes her to do in a day. It’s going to take some work. But it’s going to be a lot easier after you master and apply these lessons.

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.