Chief audit executives spend a great deal of time focused on plans, risks, and deliverables. That focus is necessary, but as leaders more is needed. The effectiveness of an internal audit function is shaped as much by how the team is led as by the work it delivers. Strong internal audit plans and sound methodology matter, but leadership ultimately determines whether those efforts translate into trust, insight, and impact.
As internal audit continues to shift toward a more advisory role, soft skills are no longer “nice to have.” They are foundational. Trust, communication, and leadership depth determine whether internal audit’s insights are heard, understood, and acted upon.
With the start of a new year, CAEs have an opportunity to step back and consider a different set of resolutions, ones that centers on people rather than processes and efficiencies. At the end of the day, we are shaping how our teams think, engage, and show up across the organization.
Here are three New Year’s resolutions that focus on leadership habits that strengthen teams, build shared knowledge, and set internal audit up for long-term success:
Resolution #1: Delegate Relationship Building to Expand Transparency and Institutional Knowledge
In many organizations, the CAE becomes the primary relationship holder with senior leadership and key stakeholders. Overall, this may feel effective as it ensures consistency in messaging and provides a single point of accountability. But it also concentrates trust and knowledge in one role and that concentration can quietly limit the growth of both the team and the function.
Delegating relationship-building responsibilities is not about disengaging from stakeholders. It is about intentionally broadening who represents internal audit and who understands the business. When internal auditors at different levels build direct relationships with management, the audit function becomes more transparent and more resilient. Consider this a part of succession planning and team empowerment.
For the CAE, this shift reduces dependency on a single individual to maintain credibility and insight. It creates redundancy in knowledge, improves succession readiness, and allows leadership to focus more on strategy, emerging risks, board engagement, and the daily workload. For the internal audit team, direct stakeholder interaction accelerates professional development. Internal auditors gain context that cannot be captured in workpapers alone. Such as how departments operate, identifying key contacts, how decisions are made, where pressure points exist, and how risks are perceived across the organization.
The insights gathered as part of relationship building help drive better value driven internal audits. The result is a team that understands the business more deeply and feels more accountable for audit outcomes, not just audit execution.
How to put this into practice:
Start by identifying key stakeholders and assigning primary ownership of these relationships to team members, supported by the CAE. Rotate attendance at planning meetings, status updates, and remediation discussions. Prepare internal auditors in advance and debrief afterward to reinforce learning. Over time, relationship management becomes an explicit expectation, not an informal byproduct of internal audit work.
At a previous organization, the CAE often reminded the team that relationship building didn’t start and end with an audit. We were encouraged to grab a cup of coffee with management throughout the year and have informal conversations that helped us understand the business, build trust, and surface risks long before they appeared in an audit plan.
Resolution #2: Treat Leadership Development as a Core Internal Audit Responsibility
Internal Audit plans are formal, visible, and measurable. Leadership development often is not. As a result, it can unintentionally become secondary to delivery deadlines and reporting cycles. As internal auditors, we tend to prioritize the work over the team performing the work. A meaningful resolution for CAEs is to treat leadership development with the same level of intention as audit execution.
Developing future leaders requires more than training courses. It requires trust. It means allowing team members to make decisions, lead conversations, and navigate ambiguity, sometimes imperfectly. This can feel uncomfortable, particularly in a profession built on precision. But without these experiences, internal auditors do not develop the judgment or confidence needed to operate at higher levels.
For the CAE, investing in leadership development builds capacity across the function. It reduces operational bottlenecks and creates a team capable of carrying responsibility independently. This, in turn, frees leadership to focus on forward-looking risks and strategic priorities. For the team, leadership opportunities signal long-term investment. Internal auditors who are trusted with responsibility are more engaged, more confident, and more likely to grow into roles that strengthen the function over time.
How to put this into practice:
Delegate authority, not just tasks, by assigning audit leads responsibility for planning, execution, and stakeholder communication. Use stretch assignments intentionally, pairing them with coaching and reflection. Schedule regular one-on-one conversations that focus on career development, not just performance. Most importantly, resist the urge to step in too quickly. Learning happens in the space between guidance and independence. Always remember, internal auditors tend to grow the most in the areas where they feel the least comfortable.
Resolution #3: Make Psychological Safety an Intentional Leadership Practice
Internal audit relies on professional skepticism, yet many teams hesitate to challenge assumptions, raise concerns, or admit uncertainty. This hesitation is rarely about competence. More often, it reflects a lack of psychological safety.
Psychological safety is not about lowering standards or avoiding accountability. It is about creating an environment where people feel comfortable speaking up early, before issues escalate or insights are lost. When internal auditors feel safe asking questions and offering alternative perspectives, audit quality improves.
For the CAE, a psychologically safe team surfaces risks sooner and debates conclusions more thoroughly. This leads to better decision making and fewer surprises late in the audit process. For the internal audit team, psychological safety reduces fear and encourages continuous learning. It strengthens collaboration and allows diverse perspectives to shape internal audit conclusions.
How to put this into practice:
Model the behavior you want to see. Ask for dissenting views during planning discussions. Acknowledge lessons learned from past audits, including your own. When mistakes occur, focus on understanding and improvement rather than blame or punishment. Normalize questions—especially from newer team members—and reinforce that curiosity is a professional strength.
Looking Ahead into 2026 and Beyond
These three resolutions, sharing relationships, developing leaders, and building psychological safety, go hand in hand. They shift internal audit leadership away from pure oversight and toward building strong, adaptable teams. Also, each of these takes deliberate and consistent effort to have a lasting impact. So, like the gym in January, the real results come from showing up long after the initial motivation wears off. When we invest intentionally in people, stronger internal audit outcomes tend to follow. 
Jesse M. Laseman, CIA, CFE is an internal audit consultant at Sikich with nearly 10 years of experience in financial services, government, and not-for-profit sectors, specializing in operational audits, internal controls, data analytics, and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance.