Even before the coronavirus outbreak, it was clear that in today’s hyper-connected world, risks are moving faster than ever. As we see with the pandemic, a catastrophic event or set of circumstances can spring up quickly and change everything.
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While the coronavirus crisis brings with it a special set of conditions and challenges for companies and internal audit functions, it highlights the need for risk-management related functions like internal audit to become more agile and enabled to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. If internal audit is to add value at companies where operations are innovating and adopting new technologies at mind-boggling speed, it must also embrace change, explore promising new technologies, and develop a mindset of innovation.
To shed some light on these and other topics, we recently caught up with Alec Arons, founder of Alec G. Arons Consulting LLC, to record Internal Audit 360’s first podcast episode. Arons works with chief audit executives and audit committees to improve the effectiveness of audit leaders, develop leadership pipelines, and improve overall performance of internal audit functions. His message is clear: internal audit simply must improve at transformation and become more flexible and agile to react to a fast-moving set of risks.
“The one thing that is constant in internal audit is change,” says Arons. “And there are tremendous opportunities out there for internal audit to see those changes, embrace those changes, and become more efficient and effective in fulfilling internal audit’s mission to the organization.”
While the podcast was recorded just as coronavirus cases were starting to show up in the United States, Arons addressed the crisis and the need for smart, quick decision making to deal with it. “The pace of change and the speed of risk is accelerating. There is no better example, as we talk today, as the coronavirus outbreak and the impact it is having globally,” Arons states. “What started off slowly is accelerating rapidly and we are really just starting to understand the impact that it is having on companies, on their supply chains, and on the way they do business. Audit is going to have to respond to that. They are going to have to gain an understanding of how it is impacting the business and also how companies are dealing with the risk itself and how it effects employees around the world.”
The organizations that are able to manage through this most difficult crisis are those that are able to react quickly to rapidly changing circumstances and plan for disruption. “As internal auditors we are going to need to be prepared to respond, to stop on a dime, to change what we are doing and look at things in a different way,” he says.
Listen to the podcast to hear more about how to transform internal audit, including adopting some aspects of agile auditing, using design theory, and what we can learn from our audit customers to build the nimble internal audit function that stakeholders are demanding. 
About our podcast guest:
Alec Arons is the founder of Alec G. Arons Consulting LLC. He works with CAE’s and Audit Committees to improve the effectiveness of audit leaders, develop leadership pipelines and improve overall performance of internal audit functions. He has over 35 years of experience including 25 years’ experience as a consultant assisting his clients in all areas of Governance, Risk and Compliance. As a partner with a Big 4 Public Accounting firm and the Advisory Practice Leader of a national consultancy, he has assisted companies with Enterprise Risk Assessments, Agile Transformation, Sarbanes Oxley Compliance and managed strategic co-sourcing relationships. He has worked with Fortune 500 and emerging growth companies.
Arons can be reached by email at: alec.arons@gmail.com