I’m talking with my friend Bruce Turner again about his recent book “Team Leader’s Guide to Internal Audit Leadership” in this #jammingwithjason #internalauditpodcast.
The role of #internalaudit team leaders is being reshaped to accommodate the recognition of Chief Audit Executives (CAEs) as trusted advisors within the C-suite. This requires team leaders to transition to a higher level by providing practical, meaningful ideas to optimize internal audit’s value proposition through attuned, balanced, and credible day-to-day audit engagement activities.
His book provides fresh, timely, and higher-level insights on the expanding role of team leaders, and the need for them to deliver internal auditing services on a day-to-day basis that optimize the value proposition for the benefit of internal audit’s stakeholders.
Listen in at: http://www.jasonmefford.com/jammingwithjason/
Bruce Turner, has more than 40 years of practitioner and leadership experience in internal auditing, including being the Chief Audit Executive at several organizations. He has recruited dozens of new auditors into internal audit roles throughout his career and watched proudly as their careers blossomed.
You can find his book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088YTMHD6/
Transcript
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Jason Mefford: Well hey everybody, today I have a very special treat. I have my friend Bruce Turner back with me. Bruce is my mate, all the way from down under so Bruce. Welcome back. How you doing,
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Bruce Turner: Tonight Jason getting very well thank you very well indeed.
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Jason Mefford: Very well indeed. I know it’s
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Jason Mefford: I can’t remember how much we joke before about it because my wife’s Australian too. And so, you know, we’ve been emailing back and forth a little bit and and so it just kind of, I don’t know all the different ology jokes like it. Throw out there, but we won’t
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Jason Mefford: But it’s, it’s, yeah. It’s, I have a special place in my heart for Australia for a lot of reasons I’ve been pulled their business wise even long before I met my wife, but
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Jason Mefford: Some of my best friends are Australians as well. And interestingly enough, when I was traveling so much
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Jason Mefford: Almost. You know, I, I’d stand out because I like to go out and take a little walk or stand out in front of the hotel and almost every time it didn’t matter where I was at in the world. Guess who had run into an Australian tour.
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So, it’s amazing.
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Jason Mefford: Oh yeah, oh yeah so well I know I was joking with you before, because, you know, maybe we’ll give you
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Jason Mefford: Just a little, little background on yourself. But people probably already know who you are because you’ve had a very, very distinguished career.
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Jason Mefford: But I was joking with you that i think i think you’re busier in retirement and you work when you’re actively actively employed because you’ve been cranking out the books.
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Jason Mefford: And continuing to do a lot of work and now that’s kind of what we want to talk a little bit about today, but
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Jason Mefford: For people that don’t know you already maybe just kind of a brief, brief background on yourself, then let’s kind of jump in because I think we wanted to talk about one of the books, and particularly the team leaders guide today.
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Bruce Turner: It sounds good. So for those who don’t know me I retired eight years ago as the chief audit executive at the Australian tax office, one of the largest
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Bruce Turner: Auto shops in the southern hemisphere proud of that ideal trip ordered executive roles in in organizations in energy and RO eyes and, you know, had a 30 year career in
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Bruce Turner: Banking before that so commercial banking merchant banking and central banking. So, and of course through that journey you you learn lots of different things and
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Bruce Turner: You know in in retirement. I’m really keen to to make sure that I can share some of those ideas and insights that I gained over the very valuable experience again.
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Jason Mefford: Well yeah cuz you have had some amazing experience. I mean, I know one of the books you say you’re talking about you know that you’re working on, you know,
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Jason Mefford: Raising from the mail room to the boardroom AND YOU’VE LITERALLY done that. Right. I mean, you started your career in the mail room and
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Jason Mefford: moved all the way up to be an executive and now I think you’re still serving on several boards of directors as well. I think even, even in retirement. Right.
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Bruce Turner: Yes. So now it’s pretty much a balance. I’ve Roland and I sit on several audit committees and share a number of those and also board so very interested in that because
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Bruce Turner: It’s not a full time gig, but you still influence organizations in their journey. And one of the things I I’m keen to do is make the world a better place. So, you know, the sort of tasks I take on link very nicely in it.
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Jason Mefford: Well, and that is, you know, like you said, I mean, eight years in retirement, and what have you been doing
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Jason Mefford: Trying to give back to the profession help mold you know people give give some insights and some of the learnings that you had to try to make this world a better place.
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Jason Mefford: It’s one of the reasons why I like you, so much. I think we’re, we’re, like, totally in line on this, you know, so so yeah let’s. Well, you know, let’s just kind of jumping, because I know when we, when we first talked, we, we thought we’d
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Jason Mefford: We kind of go through and talk a little bit about the team. Team Leaders guide, because that’s a book that’s out it’s published people can actually get it now.
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Jason Mefford: It kind of fits in this this little niche. That’s kind of needed there. So maybe let’s let’s just kind of jump into that a little bit because
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Jason Mefford: I know at least when I was coming up in my career, you get promoted and now you’re a manager or a senior, but it usually doesn’t come with any management training. It’s like, here you go. Right, so
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Bruce Turner: And of course, when I was coming through the ranks the, the Bible for internal auditors was Soyuz internal auditing.
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Bruce Turner: That both you and I had the privilege and an honor of contributing to the seventh edition, which is at the now.
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Bruce Turner: And the seventh edition of Soyuz is an excellent publication and it’s very much focused on the strategic level so
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Bruce Turner: Arms. The chief audit executive with a lot of good information. It also is very useful for the C suite.
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Bruce Turner: And what I thought was that there is a an ish below that, which is a team leaders and they can have a lot of different titles, you know, can be senior manager, it can be audit manager, it can be ordered director, it can be
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Bruce Turner: Senior supervisor, whatever the title is. And there’s a lot of people who sit at that wrong, just below the chief audit executive or enlarge audit for audit shops two runs below the chief audit executive who need to be counted for as well.
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Bruce Turner: These days, the chief audit executive is expected to see the in the C suite and around the table layer and contribute at a more strategic level, which I think it’s a fantastic
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Bruce Turner: Opportunity for internal auditor to make a bigger difference to organizations.
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Bruce Turner: What that means is that the team leaders have to do a lot of heavy lifting. Now,
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Bruce Turner: Much more involved in stakeout held a relationship management, much more involved in the development of your team.
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Bruce Turner: And picking up a larger part of the responsibility for the planning of words, the execution of audits and the best tools and techniques to use
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Bruce Turner: And through the reporting and medical reporting and then through the follow up or recommendations and want to talk about reporting and communicating with clients. It’s much broader than just issuing an audit report.
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Bruce Turner: Have the opportunity. These days to get in and actually do some things on site for that chick or an executive might have done in the past, you know, taking half an hour or an hour out of the
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Bruce Turner: Field work to actually present to the staff and talk to them about some area we’ve got expertise, whether it’s governance risk management compliance assurance activities, whatever.
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Bruce Turner: These people love that sort of opportunity and it helps to build the credibility of internal audit, as well as the team later. So the book deals, you know, a whole wide range of things that help the team later change the mindset.
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Bruce Turner: From being one of the team to actually leading the team and doing a whole bunch of things that they wouldn’t have traditionally done for the stakeholders.
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Jason Mefford: Excuse me. Well, yeah, like you said, especially as in some organizations, it’s not true for everybody, but in
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Jason Mefford: Like you said, in some of the bigger organizations, the CEO is elevated up to that C suite level.
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Jason Mefford: And and a lot of times is taking on other responsibilities. Right, so like I had risk management ethics and compliance. In addition to internal audit.
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Jason Mefford: Which means you know I effectively have kind of like three people underneath me now that are responsible for each of those different areas. So I don’t have as much time.
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Jason Mefford: You know to do, effectively what some of these next level down folks are doing now. They’re some of them are effectively acting as a CAE but without the title. Right.
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Bruce Turner: Very true. Jason. Very true. And when I ran the internal audit function for state rail some years ago. You know, I had responsibility for major investigations corruption prevention as well as internal audit.
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Bruce Turner: Now headed to about 3035 people
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Bruce Turner: And most of those were in the Internal Audit area and so whilst I had you know 70 or 80% of my staff in the Internal Audit area. I spent about 20% of my time there.
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Bruce Turner: And because major investigations and corruption prevention was just a significant part of the wrong.
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Jason Mefford: Yeah, it takes on a lot more a lot more of an effort
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Jason Mefford: So, you know, like you said, I mean, some of the, some of these other responsibilities now are following are kind of trickling down into the organization more about stakeholder management team development, you know, doing more of the reporting and communicating itself.
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Jason Mefford: So what are, what are some of the, you know, kind of skills or things that now these team leaders need some of the kind of the guidance and tips to kind of give them because
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Jason Mefford: Like I can only imagine, you know, again, I’m just kind of going from my career, but I usually. It was like I got thrown in the deep end of the pool. You know, you get promoted and it’s like, here you go. It’s like learn how to swim.
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Jason Mefford: You know, feel like probably some of the people might feel that way too. Right. So, are there some specific areas, maybe that they should kind of focus in on or, you know, how did they kind of figure out what it is. So they don’t drown.
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Bruce Turner: Very good question. And so one of the things that I did with the book was confer with people that I knew across the world, and I’ve got
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Bruce Turner: input from 40 odd people and and what I’ve been up to do is blend some of those into the stories. So we’ve got a whole bunch of stories throughout the book.
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Bruce Turner: As well as the technical stuff the technical stuff which links into standards and the sorts of things that into a lot of professional should understand and should issue.
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Bruce Turner: And one of the real
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Bruce Turner: Interesting things that came out of it was that there’s a whole bunch of myths out there. So each of the chapters in the book.
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Bruce Turner: Includes a couple of myths and I remember during my time at the Reserve Bank of Australia, there was this meat there that
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Bruce Turner: You know, I don’t need to do my best when I’m writing an order report because the boss is going to change it anyway. And I thought what I don’t want to change reports.
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Bruce Turner: I actually want to get a report sit down with a cup of coffee read through it so on and off an issue it. And so there are myths like that that have included in the book.
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Bruce Turner: And I got this from some of these people from across the world. You know one of them as well as with it auditors, for example here where it auditors were different. We didn’t have to follow the standards.
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Bruce Turner: And we don’t have to ride in non technical terms. Hang on. You do.
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Bruce Turner: Do you have
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Bruce Turner: Three Osaka, you have it. And so there are standards. They’re very similar to the standards. So you still need to follow standards.
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Bruce Turner: And actually, you got to write for the audience. So the myth that you’re different. Because sure it doesn’t hold water in terms of adding value to the client.
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Bruce Turner: And another myth that are included and is that there are a lot of people who think will on our team leader. I’m going to continue doing what I what I’ve been doing
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Bruce Turner: Nothing changes or I’m sorry, there’s a hell of a lot that does change in terms of what you should be doing and the expectations that people have of you.
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Bruce Turner: You know, you need to get in to the room with executives and you’ve got to earn that gravitas. You’ve got to make a difference from day one. So there’s a whole bunch of myths that are out there. And we actually try to break those myths down
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Bruce Turner: One way of answering your question. So one of the key things that people moving into a team leader role or who have been there for a while, need to understand is that the IQ will get you so far.
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Jason Mefford: And
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Bruce Turner: Then need to apply your business acumen.
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Bruce Turner: You need to understand how you would run the business. If you are the boss. You then need to make sure that your team comes along for the ride and understands the to add value, you really need to
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Bruce Turner: Adopt that is the segment mindset and the other element that comes in very clearly is the emotional quotient the EQ. So it’s really important for people to understand
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Bruce Turner: And develop an appropriate level of EQ wherever they can because at the end of the day, it’s the soft skills that you can to leverage to make a difference to the business and to actually lead into the thing
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Jason Mefford: Well, thank you for saying that Bruce I didn’t even pay you to do that. But it’s like that is one of the things that I have been harping on over and over again for years now.
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Jason Mefford: And, you know, like you said your IQ only gets just so far.
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Jason Mefford: Right, then it’s going to be your business acumen and your EQ, that actually gets you to where you need to go and that’s that is a big shift. And I think, you know, I think, in my opinion, it’s, it’s getting further and further down in the organization or you have to do that right it’s
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Jason Mefford: Live 50 years ago maybe only the CIA. He needed
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Jason Mefford: To do that, but now I would say at least at manager level, if not even down to the
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Jason Mefford: Senior role, you need to start
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Jason Mefford: Developing some of this EQ and business document.
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Jason Mefford: Because if you’re if you don’t really understand what your business does you’re always going to have difficulty communicating with people, your recommendations aren’t going to be relevant. How are you really going to find the right risks, right, unless you actually understand the business.
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Jason Mefford: Yeah.
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Bruce Turner: I remember, you know, one of the examples I including there is in an organization that was changing quite considerably and they had a registry business. And that is, you know, bonds and stocks and so forth and
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Bruce Turner: You know, the internal auditors got got in and, you know, did the assessment of the risks and the controls and identified a whole range of cats computer assisted or techniques that they could utilize and ended up coming up with a Rolls Royce designed internal audit program.
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Bruce Turner: And then the penny dropped when the business will will actually the cost of the order is going to be greater than the contribution of the profit that we’re getting from this business, and then the penny dropped, of course, that, you know, we kind of need to pull them pull that back.
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Bruce Turner: And understand, you know, the business a little bit better because he was going through a transformation, you know, governments were issuing list bonds and stocks.
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Bruce Turner: Will bring budgets back into balance there was going to be less activity in the future and therefore the order came up with a fantastic what a program, but it was never going to work because it was never going to add value in a producer a reasonable cost.
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Jason Mefford: Well, and I think that’s, that’s where again some of that business acumen comes in.
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Jason Mefford: Right, because it’s, I don’t know how many times I’ve seen somebody in it’s easier now for me looking from the outside, that when you’re in it.
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Jason Mefford: Seriously, right. It’s always easier that way. So we’ll, we’ll
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Jason Mefford: Give some of that but but it’s
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Jason Mefford: It’s always kind of amazed me
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Jason Mefford: How many times I’ve seen people make recommendations or want to increase the internal controls in certain areas.
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Jason Mefford: And if all they had done was a Back of the Napkin kind of analysis, you know, again, it’s like why would I spend $200,000 to mitigate a $50,000 risk that doesn’t make business sense
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Jason Mefford: Right. But a lot of times is auditors for, like, but it’s best practice, it’s a good control. It’s like, but you’re just lost 150 grand by doing that.
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Bruce Turner: And one of the things that we also talk about in the book is the opportunity for auditors to focus on optimizing controls.
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Bruce Turner: And one example of that is, what can we as auditors do to reduce the red tape, so two angles. One is the red tape that’s imposed within the business.
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Bruce Turner: Because it’s always been done that way. And secondly, the red tape that we think has been imposed by government or regulators.
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Bruce Turner: And what can we do to actually stream on it to me what their requirements actually are. And I’ve actually included a case study in there where one guy said, well,
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Bruce Turner: This, the amount of time and effort that was going into producing the compliance report for the regulator was just incredibly too much. So he actually spoke to the regulators and civil what you actually need. And I said, Well, three courses stuff he’s giving us with a new
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Bruce Turner: This is really focusing on and he said, aha, and a streamline the process. The other thing that’s coming through with
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Bruce Turner: The covert 19 global pandemic at the moment is that governments are actually starting to reduce red tape and there’s lots of things that
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Bruce Turner: Were mandated previously that they’ve softened because they need to get the country’s their economies working again.
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Bruce Turner: And I think that provides the opportunity for auditors to actually look at their own organizations and say, What can we do to change this one of the examples I use is an organization, an energy company. I was in and
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Bruce Turner: I was told I had to do something. And I’ve only been here a short while but it does make sense. Boy, why do we need to do that. And I said, it’s an audit requirement. That’s interesting.
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Bruce Turner: What and then again make sense. You don’t need to do that anymore.
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Bruce Turner: So I think we need lots of opportunities here for internal order to optimize controls, rather than to strengthen controls. We’ve got to change that mindset. I think the team leaders have got a really important role to play in it.
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Jason Mefford: Well, they do. And I think that’s, you know, some little examples of that are ways to that we can show you know our value to the organization.
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Jason Mefford: And that can come, you know, in a lot of different ways when things change. Right. Sometimes. Sometimes people don’t change. I mean, I remember
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Jason Mefford: You know, long time ago we autism. One of the minds that we had. We had a mining division. It’s one of the divisions and we went out there.
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Jason Mefford: And you know, we were looking at AP and and kind of going through and one of the staff, you know, kind of
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Jason Mefford: outlined the process. Right. And they brought it back to me and I’m like, why are they doing it this way.
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Jason Mefford: Like, well that’s what they said they’re doing, you know, and so I’m I go back, you know, to the AP manager. And I’m like, why, why are you doing the manual three way match.
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Jason Mefford: And she’s like, well, that’s our policy. That’s the way we’ve always done it. I said, Did you not realize we just spent $25 million on this new era P program that does it automatically
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Jason Mefford: Other right so it’s like there’s lots of little things like that that kind of over the years we’ve themselves into organizations and almost become
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Jason Mefford: No longer questioned right that that again being from the outside as auditors, we can hopefully question some of those things and maybe find some ways to optimize controls.
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Jason Mefford: You know, instead of trying to add additional controls how happy. Do you think that manager would be as if we can say. And you know what, by the way, you don’t need to do these five things and that’s going to save your team 5000 hours a year.
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Jason Mefford: Right. Just, just like that regulator report right when the guy figured out three quarters. You don’t have to do is like
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Bruce Turner: It reminds me when you talk about accounts payable.
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Bruce Turner: I went to one organization to take over as head of the corporate governance area and
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Bruce Turner: Risk Management, that kind of stuff. And it ultimately morphed into they wanted me to take over the internal audit function, which I did.
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Bruce Turner: And I’m trying to work out health and get more time to do two more meaty audience, rather than just the routine Financial Control Ordinance which had been a tradition, the program. And I said why we auditing accounts payable twice a year and this year is control issues. Oh, that’s not
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Bruce Turner: Every time and then that that my predecessor said, but the Auditor General, which is the Supreme Audit institution.
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Bruce Turner: Requires us to do that. I said, Isn’t that funny. I’ve just come from another organization that’s audited by the Auditor General and we do accounts payable audits every two to three years. So said
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Bruce Turner: In a minute so ring up the the audit lead at the auditor general’s office and they said, now we don’t actually need that.
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Bruce Turner: We’ve been hearing your predecessor, but
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Bruce Turner: He wanted done so I then suddenly had this packet dies, like an invest in really meaningful audience. So sometimes you’re questioning ourselves in in their habits, we get into within internal audit as well. And that’s where a team leader can can play an important role.
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Jason Mefford: Well, yeah. Because just approaching it from a different way actually doing some questioning it. Because like you said, it’s funny that
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Jason Mefford: You know, just sociologically to right. I mean, as humans, we kind of create these traditions, we kind of do things because it’s just always the way it’s been done right.
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Jason Mefford: I mean, I remember there was a all story that Ziegler used to tell about about this woman, you know, baking the ham at the Holiday right and so they would cut off the ends of the ham.
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Jason Mefford: Before they actually baked it right. And finally, so one of the daughters was like, Mom, why do we do that. Well, I don’t know your grandmother did that.
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Jason Mefford: You that, you know, it’s just the way it’s done right. So they go back to Grandma on. It’s like, Grandma. Why did you do that. She’s like, because the standard hand was too big. It wouldn’t fit in my up. And so I had to cut the ends off of the other you know
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Jason Mefford: It’s like sometimes over time. We kind of quick questioning, some of those things. And again, I think that’s where, like you said,
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Jason Mefford: The team leader you know level, we should be probably looking at that more and really trying to, to help organizations especially when it comes to compliance things
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Bruce Turner: And so really
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Jason Mefford: We only want to do things that are actually required
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Bruce Turner: Very true. And I think the audit committee has an important role to play as well in terms of challenging you, Chief. What an executive in terms of what’s coming through in the order plan.
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Jason Mefford: Yeah, they do. And that’s a whole whole nother book that you’re writing is kind of targeting audit committee members because I know
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Jason Mefford: You know, to just just having worked at and coaching CES. There’s a lot of times some frustration with audit committees.
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Jason Mefford: Because sometimes, you know, I think, just like like we were talking about. A lot of times we get kind of thrown into positions that we weren’t really ready for
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Jason Mefford: A lot of times people on the audit committees kind of are that way to or they might be a former CFO right and they don’t have the benefit of having somebody like you, who was
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Jason Mefford: A former CIA. I mean, that’s what, that’s why. One of the things I’ve been saying for a long time to is where’s all the retired CEOs on on
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Jason Mefford: You know, it’s like, don’t, don’t just hire x, you know, CFO or ex partners in public accounting firms that only did external audit you need to have that internal audit side of it as well, to be able to understand what internal audit goes through also
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Bruce Turner: Absolutely. I think it’s imperative. And I think that there’s an opportunity for chief ordered executives and
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Bruce Turner: I guess senior team leaders to start looking beyond the full time employment, what are they going to be doing in retirement, is there an opportunity for them to
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Bruce Turner: Move into that world of water committees, and I think that’s a, it’s a great way to contribute the expertise that they’ve gained over many, many years and but I also think it’s important
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Bruce Turner: For true for the executives to get some experience sitting around the audit committee table as well as a member of the audit committee because
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Bruce Turner: What it does, it actually sharpens your thinking and you start thinking more like your committee than a tree for an executive, which I guess as a step up in some wise.
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Bruce Turner: And not being critical of truth ordered executives, but now when I I went to the Australian tax office.
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Bruce Turner: And I spent about five years there before I retired and you know the audit committee chair was asking, What do you want to do in terms of your professional development, you pretty well rounded and
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Bruce Turner: We agreed that I would take on a couple of water coming roles outside of the federal sphere, and I found it really beneficial to do that and actually help my day job enormously.
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Bruce Turner: Because I think differently. And I think I grew more into the chief audit executive role after you know 40 odd years then
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Bruce Turner: Previously, the real eye opener.
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Jason Mefford: Which is interesting because, you know, a lot of times you’re like I said, I’ve
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Jason Mefford: The most successful chief auditors that I that I know usually have sat on the other side of the desk.
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Jason Mefford: At some point in their career. So, you know, like you said, if you’ve moved out of audit maybe or worked in risk or been in charge of risk and audit or
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Jason Mefford: You know you’ve moved into a controller role for a while and then come back to audit or, like you said, I love that idea to have
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Jason Mefford: You know, sitting on a board or on an audit committee, you know, when I was younger and I served on several different nonprofit boards as well. And so you kind of get an idea of how the board operates what it is to be a board member, because I think it just gives you
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Jason Mefford: Maybe more compassion.
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Jason Mefford: To for for the people and a better understanding
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Jason Mefford: Of what they’re going through, because actually it was inch I’d never heard anybody say it that way but you know like you kind of did. But have you know what made you better in your day job to and actually a CA thinking like an audit committee member is a really good thing.
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Bruce Turner: Is I just pick up on your point about boards as well. Jason because you know I sit on boards and have done so. And for a while now.
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Bruce Turner: And I was sitting on with the first board meeting for a local health district and it covered several of the major hospitals in Australia.
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Bruce Turner: And around the table. There was myself, there were, I think, three or four professors. There were three or four doctors or medical specialists.
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Bruce Turner: Couple of lawyers I walked into the room and it was actually really intimidating at my first board meeting, but I’m thinking, What can I possibly contribute here.
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Bruce Turner: And the penny dropped the penny drop that hey, I come from a totally different background, a very unique skill set that I bring around this table.
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Bruce Turner: And these people who are highly accomplished in their fields were willing to listen and learn and adopt the ideas that are sort of came out with
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Bruce Turner: But initially, it was, it was quite daunting wondering how I could possibly contribute in that environment.
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Bruce Turner: But I experienced big businesses. Well, I’d experienced all of the elements of governance risk management compliance assurance now along the way. And that was a talent that I had that they didn’t have. So it’s interesting that you mentioned boards and how we can contribute there. Yeah.
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Jason Mefford: Well, I think, I think it is and I think the more I mean there’s been a lot of research done that, the more diverse the boards are
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Jason Mefford: The better it is. You know that can be I mean diversity can mean lots of different things. But in every different way, the more diverse your boards are, you know, as far as gender mix ethnicity mix, you know, background.
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Jason Mefford: You know, different professional fields and other stuff because because like you said, I mean on that, on that one board, you had, you know, you had doctors, you had professors and you had lawyers and those all have a different perspective. But again, there’s no there’s no business acumen.
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Jason Mefford: You’re on to it until you kind of came into it. And so having you on the board actually did add quite a bit to it so
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Bruce Turner: And then we worked on on the skills weeks for the board going forward. And because number of people had to retire over the ensuing years
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Bruce Turner: Once they reach the maximum term. So we were able to work on the diversity and were able to work on adopting a skills based board.
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Bruce Turner: Which was really interesting as well. So I was then cheering the denominations committee and putting in place. Some of these practices, which was a lot of fun as well.
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Yeah.
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Jason Mefford: You’ve had an amazing career, my friend.
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Jason Mefford: Well, it’s, you know, we’ve only got a couple minutes left side, I kind of figured, you know,
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Jason Mefford: Where you’d like to go because, you know, again, just for the last couple of minutes because you know i know you’re trying to make the world a better place.
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Jason Mefford: Trying to help our profession. Help, help, do what you can. So, what, what kind of, you know, leaving bits of wisdom, if you will, would you like to, you know, to make sure
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Jason Mefford: To give people before we wrap it up for today.
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Bruce Turner: Well, I think we’ve touched on a few of these through the conversation, Jason. But let me just recap. We’re living in very different times. Now you and I have never experienced the
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Bruce Turner: Challenges that businesses have at the moment the economic situation that many countries are in at the moment.
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Bruce Turner: The loss of life that we’re experiencing as a as a consequence of what is a very serious global pandemic.
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Bruce Turner: We’ve talked about business continuity planning in the past, we talked about crisis management planning in the past.
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Bruce Turner: And those companies and organizations that have good solid arrangements in place a surviving reasonably well as a consequence of that they’ve looked at and they’ve challenged their supply chains over the years and they looked at how they can ensure the businesses sustainable.
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Bruce Turner: But what it means, you know, once we get through this stage of the pandemic.
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Bruce Turner: Business will be operating differently and therefore those people who are involved in internal audit governance risk management.
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Bruce Turner: And compliance activities need to actually look at what the business is going to be like in in five years time.
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Bruce Turner: And need to be start starting to do some of those things we talked about, you know, optimizing controls, they need to be pulling back on some of the routine audit stuff.
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Bruce Turner: That you kind of think you have to do and look at it through the eyes of the business leaders in terms of what is it that’s going to help them.
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Bruce Turner: craft a successful journey over the next few years, and that will mean that we’re going to have to cut back on some things we’re going to have to cut back on things.
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Bruce Turner: As auditors that we would typically think a good things to do in, in some cases, we might call away from some of the sexy things that auditors.
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Bruce Turner: Have been doing for a while and get back to some of the basics as well because it’s in times like these here that some of those fundamental controls do get overlooked.
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Bruce Turner: Deliberately or otherwise. So we need to get the fine balance between, you know, what are some, some of the fundamental controls that are audit committee in their board and now C suite are relying on and give them that level of comfort, but at the same time.
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Bruce Turner: reduce some of that kind of stuff by starting to look at how we can improve the business operations and work with management to do that. So it’s meta
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Bruce Turner: In some cases of rolling up your sleeves and getting stuck in and sharing your insights in our experience.
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Bruce Turner: So that the business does survive in you know 510 years time. Just have a look at the number of organizations that women have grown up with
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Bruce Turner: And no longer exist. And some of these are very, very big companies and whereas we’ve seen some companies and Legos. A really good example of that where
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Bruce Turner: You know they traditionally built building blocks for for boys to use their rediscovered the business vision. A number of years ago. So they created some toys that appeal to girls.
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Bruce Turner: They’ve evolved now into movies and things like that. So they were a business that was able to imagine a different future. And I think we’ve got to help our leaders. Imagine the future of our business. And what that might be.
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Jason Mefford: Well, that’s a, that’s a
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Jason Mefford: That’s a great way to kind of end up because I I hadn’t I hadn’t thought about the Lego example, there’s a few other companies that I’ve
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Jason Mefford: usually refer back to. But yeah, now that you’re saying that you can see where you know it was the foresight of people in that business. And gee, wouldn’t it be great if internal audit can be a part of that discussion, or maybe help bring some of it up so that
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Jason Mefford: You know, instead of our, our, you know, organizations becoming a dinosaur and no longer existing that it’s actually something that can transform itself. And, you know, imagine a different future
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Jason Mefford: Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful thoughts. Yeah.
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Jason Mefford: I love that. I love that you got the wheels spinning now.
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Jason Mefford: Well Bruce, thank you. You know, for taking time again with me today and good luck. I know you’ve got another book coming out very soon. I think later this fall.
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Jason Mefford: And you’re you’re working to wrap up another one. So there’s going to be more and more information. I’m gonna have to have you keep coming back and back and back so
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Bruce Turner: Why it’s always a pleasure, Jason.
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Jason Mefford: Ellen is
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Bruce Turner: Numbered seats.
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Jason Mefford: All right, well thank you have a good rest your day, man.
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Bruce Turner: Little pigment. Bye bye.
