028 - Don’t Hate Your Internal Auditors - Do This Instead

Apr 12, 2021

In this Compliance That Makes Sense episode, we discuss internal auditors and why you shouldn't hate them. People sometimes perceive internal auditors as useless, time-wasting, police playing, and always inflating problems while not being an expert in any particular field but still telling everyone else what to do. When I worked at Amazon, they loved their internal auditors; they wanted them to come and give the team an outside perspective with the best interest of the team and Amazon in mind. So listen as I give both sides of the argument about internal auditors and why you shouldn't hate them.

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Today's episode:

• [00:34] Hello, my friends!
• [02:53] At Amazon, the internal auditors would come and give the team an outside perspective.
• [04:07] When you audit a function, and you don't have experts on your team, you have someone from a different function join the audit.
• [06:40] Internal audits always start with risk assessment.
• [07:31] The idea of internal audits is to help the organization fix urgent things that need to be fixed for them to go forward.
• [09:46] Listen, as Yana shares how she would like internal auditors to understand the risks involved by asking people.
• [12:09] After you really understand the issues, you try to prioritize and develop an audit plan.
• [15:15] Yana recommends that a startup have three to five dates per year.
• [17:42] Yana prefers when the outcome of an internal audit is very specific and says something.
• [20:15] If your internal auditor is only interested in you following your policy, then she would suggest you fire them.
• [21:36] Thank you for listening!

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