A vision of the 'perfect' internal auditor.

• Author: Kristie, James
• Position: THOUGHT LEADERSHIP - Reprint

From Lessons Learned on the Audit Trail by Richard F. Chambers. Copyright [c] 2014 by the author. Published by The Institute of Internal Auditors Research Foundation.

Not so many years ago, the "perfect" internal auditor was considered the one with twenty-twenty hindsight--the one who could go back in time through skillful use of records and interviews to uncover every mistake and report each misstep in exacting detail. Back then, we thought we best added value when we helped our organizations recognize past mistakes and avoid making them again in the future. At most companies, our primary role was finding out what had gone wrong. We were the hindsight experts.

As the rate of change continues to accelerate, I can say with some certainty, based on the decades that I've been a part of this profession, that internal auditing has seen more changes in the past decade alone than at any other time in its history. And while clear hindsight continues to be important, one of the most fundamental ways in which we have changed recently is that we are no longer focused mainly on the past. In today's relentlessly evolving business environments, yesterday's ways of doing things are often not good enough. Our vision of the "perfect" internal auditor has been transformed: we have advanced from providing twenty-twenty hindsight to...