Perhaps the Securities and Exchange Commission is mistaking Internal Audit Awareness Month with Internal Audit Malfeasance Awareness Month. Last Thursday the SEC filed insider trading charges against two internal auditors for allegedly sharing tips that they got from their respective employers. On the same day, the SEC announced that the Read More
Editor’s Blog Former Enron CFO Andy Fastow was at the center of one of Corporate America’s most notorious frauds. He helped orchestrate the series of off-the-books special purpose entities that enabled Enron to hide its failings and propped the company up before its inevitable collapse. For his part in the Read More
Guest Blog: Once upon a time, Little Red Riding Hood ventured out into the forest to visit her poor, sick grandmother. Along the way, she encountered a charming wolf, which gave her no cause for alarm. Although he asked countless questions about where she was going and distracted her with beautiful flowers, Read More
An internal audit of marketing practices at the U.S. unit of Korean electronics giant Samsung may have found some unsavory business practices. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Samsung abruptly laid off several marketing employees shortly after an internal audit report was released inside the company that Read More
Nearly two-thirds of corporate controllers feel pressure to “cook the books,” according to a new international survey, and many of them feel that misrepresenting their company’s performance is just part of their job. The survey, by FloQast, a provider of close management software for corporate accounting departments, found that 64 Read More
As part of its continued efforts to put a series of massive scandals behind it, Wells Fargo recently outlined some changes it has made to how the internal audit function is structured, including adopting a more centralized system of internal audit. The troubled bank also named a new chief audit Read More
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has released a new set of professional standards on conducting internal audits that are intended to provide guidance to its members on issues that may emerge during the course of the audit process. The standards, titled “Basic Principles of Internal Audit” and Read More
Professional standards are often interesting documents. Typically they offer a set of core principles that are intended to act as a beacon of light to guide behaviors and decision-making among the noble practitioners and workers who toil under the given occupation’s collective flag. These professional standards or codes of conduct Read More
It’s no secret that companies have been adopting a more data-centric approach to managing risk and compliance and to improving internal audit. They are installing fancy software packages and hiring data analytics experts to help them sift through oceans of valuable data to look for patterns and outliers. But some Read More
Tone at the top is about humanity and not about words like compliance and regulation. It is about doing the right thing and we all know what that is in our hearts. It is about treating people with dignity and respect.
