I am busy a little bit. As little as the only toilet at a rock concert. Because of audit, bless him… What audit is? … um, for simplicity’s sake imagine … well, for instance a man who shovels coal. It doesn’t matter where he shovels it. In a pile for instance.
And then two or three clerks appear. Completely smooth, with laptops – unbelievably serious. In short, auditors. They walk up to a fellow and say:
Recently we had a quite fruitful discussion regarding next steps in advancement of Internal Audit function in our company.
Beside standard “SOX Compliance monitoring” and “Regular audits” we identified lack of one serious thing – punishment culture. Yes, I’m not mistaken. We have all – good working atmosphere, reasonably high wages, year-end bonuses etc. But there is no punishment for wrongdoing.
Probably, everybody knows, that Code of Ethics (Code of Conduct if you want) is a really useless document, on which Internal Audit insists for compliance reasons and used only twice – when deleted from mailbox and when requested to sign-off.
And it’s true. But there is also other true: It will remain useless until you do not use it. “Simple and stupid” – you’d say and again will be right.
The goal of Internal Audit is to make shareholders and External Auditors happy. And to make them happy they pour antidepressants in their coffee machines…
So, Let’s move on!