How to audit leadership to become a world-class organisation [Norman Marks interview]

For many organisations, auditing has an image problem. But with a change in attitude and enterprise-focused approach, it can turn your company into a world-class organisation. At least, so says Norman Marks, an audit and risk expert, who is author of multiple books and has been named in the North American Hall of Distinguished Practitioners. 

We recently interviewed Norman Marks on how to audit leadership to become a world-class organisation. 

Audits should provide assurance, advice and insight.

In too many organisations, internal audits are only a casual inventory management or inspection-like process. Auditors have become a police force or a pack of watch dogs.

This is wrong. 

 

The role of an auditor is not to find faults or mistakes.

Your primary role is to help your organisation succeed.

Your leadership team don't want any old audit. They want confidence the issues facing the organisation are being addressed. An organisation doesn’t get better because there is a checklist or a report - it gets better with communication, improvements and change.  

Internal audits can give your organisation a considerable competitive advantage.

To do this, auditors should help management build a process where they can understand, identify and assess the risks.

This means teaching management how to fish rather than giving them the fish.

Management needs to have the capability to run the organisation efficiently and make quality decisions, and there are aspects of that insight that could only be given through quality internal audits. Their job is to assess capabilities and provide assurance.

Some people call their auditing the "first line of defence".  I don't like that phrase. It is not our job to make the decisions. Our role is to make sure that businesses have the tools and systems in place to anticipate what might happen.

That means as auditors that we need to step back and ask what are the risks to the company as a whole? If your company has issues with business culture, employment, cost control, communications and quality, you do not need to go around every department and try to find faults. Think of individual blades of grass instead of the lawn. One of the most important trends of today is auditing your whole enterprise, and with that switching from your old audit-universe to a new risk-based universe.

What to do now:

If you would like to be interviewed, please email emily.hill@qualsys.co.uk.

Alternatively, if you would like more tips, techniques and templates for auditing leadership, sign up for our webinar on the 2nd April at 11am BST.