"Managing risk is the art of building value while understanding what can be gained or lost from action or inaction, the foreseen or the unforeseen, the planned or the unplanned. Those who know what they don't know can ask questions. Those who don't know what they don't know are paralyzed."1
The road ahead looks drastically different and it means internal audit (IA) needs to view risk assessment and planning activities with a new lens. More than ever, focusing on the right risks is critical for IA to add value to the organization and be a strategic adviser. Our recent survey of audit committee members highlighted the desire for a more flexible audit plan that focuses on a broader set of risks.2 This confirms need to innovate and evolve our approach, and that risk assessment and planning need to provide expanded insights and be more proactive.
Introducing and embracing technology to enable risk assessment and IA planning will be key to achieving expanded insights in a proactive, adaptable way. It also helps to demonstrate and visualize how audit efforts protect and enhance business value.
We realize there are incremental steps to innovation and each organization may be in different stages based upon its permissions, capability, industry, and/ or regulatory requirements. Click here to download our Issue Brief for ideas on where those incremental steps can be taken to help evolve your process
Webcast: IA risk assessment and planning for the road ahead
This fourth internal audit reimagined webcast in our series, focuses on how the risk assessment and planning process is reimagined for today’s new reality. Past webcasts in our series have explored dynamic internal auditing, use of data analytics, and improving communications and reporting.
Many agree there is also room to reimagine the approach to risk assessment and planning. It is hard to know where to start and how to begin adding incremental improvements.
In this next webcast in the series, we explore the potential for innovation in the internal audit risk assessment and planning process, and provide practical ideas for introducing data, data analytics and more frequent analysis of risk and the plan to match the pace of change in business and more efficiently use resources.
Introducing Technology into Risk Assessment and planning
Watch the video below as you think about layering technology into risk assessment and internal audit planning. We discuss technologies you may already have at your disposal, encourage you to explore technologies that already exist within your organization, and walk through how these technologies can be leveraged by IA.
