All Things Internal Audit: Filling the Internal Audit Talent Gap (Bonus Content)

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The Institute of Internal Auditors presents all things internal audit in this episode, Amanda Joe Irvin talks with Desiree Rivera about developing the next generation of internal auditors. They discussed attracting new talent, making internal audit a more appealing.

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Profession and the power of mentorship and community.

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Hey Joe. So nice to see you. Thank you so much for joining me today. I've known you for about two years now and I know how active you are in the internal audit community and all of the awesome things that you're doing at MSU Denver. Could you tell me a little bit about your journey in the field of internal auditing and really, what inspired you to become an educator?

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Sure. Yeah, I I can't believe I'm approaching 20 years in internal audit. So I actually started in public accounting like many of us did 20 years ago and we'll talk about how that has shifted and in our favor as internal auditors, but started in, in public accounting at a BIG4 firm, but learned.

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Very quickly that that was not for me. So I was one of those people that ignored the advice. You know, you have to stay until you make senior manager or all that. And I I said no, I've done my time and I actually got a great job in internal audit and ended up working at that company for about 11 years.

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Worked my way up from staff to director of Internal Audit left about six years ago. Now it's a little over six years and decided that my favorite part of my job in internal audit was teaching new staff training our staff on system implementations, you know, and we got a new audit software. I loved doing that so.

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I think teaching and training has just always been in my blood and internal audit has always been my passion, so it just.

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Is.

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Perfect all. It's like all the stars aligned for me. Desiree, it was great.

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When MSU actually asked.

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Me to be on their board 1st.

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They had an internal audit board as they were trying to become an IEP school, which I'm sure you'll explain what that is. And then I was lucky enough to be active on the board enough that they, when the current director of the program retired, they asked me to to take her place. So it just kind of aligned for me about.

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Almost two years ago now.

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That's awesome. And you said the word passion and that's really like the best way to describe you and your teaching style. And it just really shines and everyone can see how passionate you are so.

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Yeah, it's it's hard. It's hard to when you actually even have a a tattoo of the IA logo on your arm. It's hard to hide your passion for the internal audit profession when you're me, so you couldn't have said it better. Yep, along those same lines and your passion for students. Could you tell me what the biggest challenges?

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That you see today in the internal audit talent pipeline.

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So I think.

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Everyone probably is reading about the accounting pipeline and how we're losing accountants and I'm going to say sadly, but I'm not, I'm not really sad about it, but sadly, internal audit, at least at our university, still still sits under the accounting department and you know, I think that is the biggest challenge to me.

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And it's forcing me though what I love about this is it's forcing me to go outside of our accounting department, into our business schools, into even our STEM classes, our cybersecurity school that's completely outside of the Business School and attract new talent and different talent. And I think, you know, along the lines of.

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Where I started by saying, you know, when I was in college, we graduated 20 years ago and we had to go into public accounting. That was just what you did. It has shifted over time and.

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And I think it's about educating, it's about teaching and showing the students that there's something else out there. And so to me, the biggest challenge I would say is getting the students in right, which I think is everywhere and then marketing internal audit to them because it still is a bit unknown. So you have to have that.

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Fashion. You have to go and do you know pop INS at different classes? I'd love to pop in to like Intro to business and be like, hey, do you know about internal audit? So you just have to cut.

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Out of your niche.

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If that makes sense.

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Yeah. And you really kind of touched on on my next question.

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Because you guys are so creative over there in your kind of recruitment and your way of bringing awareness to the profession. So is there anything specific that you could share that has been really successful in attracting kind of these students for internal audit?

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Sure. So I think it's attending, attending attending, so you know a lot of us on faculty you know we do our best to be everywhere at once, but part of one of the biggest things I do is I I try to go to everything. So you know we have welcome week that where you know we give out hot dogs and so I'm there.

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You know, talking about internal audit, talking about. So I'm also the accounting student organization, the ASO at our at our school faculty advisor. So I'm always trying to recruit students one way or another, right depending on which.

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Hat I have.

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On. But you know it's it's going to orientation now.

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For our Graduate School, I love it. They get to meet their cohort, that they're going to go through grad school with, but it's also my opportunity to stand up, introduce myself and say, hey, I teach these awesome classes, you know, on internal audit. And one of my classes is one of three experiential learning options, and they have to take one.

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You know, but they get to pick between, you know, small business.

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Or what's the what's the other one? I'm. I'm totally spacing. What? The other one is. But one of mine is obviously internal audit where we audit the university. So I love to sell that class. I love to stand up and just be like, you know, you're going to have to take one of these, you know. Here's here's your option and please pick mine. So I think.

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I think a lot of a lot of the role is as a salesperson and you don't think of that as a faculty member, but that is how I view my role. So it's it's being in front of everybody is anywhere I can honestly.

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I think that's why you're so awesome and effective at it, and it's a great resume builder for students, so I'm sure because that's something really unique that you do over at MSU serving kind of as like the internal audit function at the university, right?

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Correct. Yeah. So I mean really, we are the third line at the university. I tell my grad students to change their e-mail signatures even for the semester. They are student internal auditors, and they are, you know, held to every confidentiality, you know, all of those things that that I'm going to put in air quotes, not that everybody can see that normal.

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Internal auditors are, so that is.

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You know it is. I've helped lots of our students put that on their resume because it's an internship essentially for a semester, so it is great to show employers that you've had that.

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So what kind of?

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What key skills and competencies would you say are really essential for this next generation of internal auditors?

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I just gave one away sales so.

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So.

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Funny for you know, I'd say probably about 10 or 15 years as I was hiring internal audit staff and and going through interviews, I would just always love to ask the question, how comfortable are you being a salesperson or what sales experience?

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That you had and you know, of course they look at you like you're.

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Crazy, because what?

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Does this have to do with internal audit but?

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The big piece?

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That I feel like is hard to teach is that communication and that influence and selling our recommendations, our ideas, our enhancements, our improvements, all of those things to the business, that's the key to being a successful internal auditor. So I always like to have my students, they always.

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Present in my class, right? They they have to have that ability to stand up and communicate. But I.

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Also, really push them to sell me on something. Sell me on what would have made this better? Or because I think that's such a key competency in our fields that we don't talk about all that much. You know, we might say communication, but to me it's really that that influence and that selling and I and I don't nobody loves that selling word right.

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But there's that quote selling equals trust. Trust equals selling or or however that goes, that that is perfect, right?

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We want them.

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If we want to be a trusted advisor, we have to be able to really influence their their decisions and and sell them our ideas.

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Yeah. And that really sounds like something that makes them very competitive in the job market. So that's that's a great kind of skill set to have and really teach. Is there anything else that you would say that aspiring internal auditors could really kind of add to their toolkit to differentiate themselves?

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You know, it's funny because I I am grading case studies right now and and we call them case studies, but they're really memos and I have them actually write memos to the board of Directors because I want them to practice.

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That succinct professional writing. So we actually do like a, a Harvard Business publishing guide to Better Business writing in my class pretty early on. And I tell them this is not your typical academic class where you're going to write a paper and you don't have to do all those fancy citations. What I want you to be able to do is to clearly.

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Write a memo. I don't even give them any page limits, right? They're not used to that. What's my word limit? What's my page limit? No, there isn't. That doesn't happen in the real world. And if anything, we want you to learn to be succinct.

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And clear and concise. And so to me, you know, communication is such a key part of internal audit, both verbal and written. And I think you're getting them out of that academic writing and into that professional writing is a competency. I know I'm working with my students on. I honestly tell them to pretend.

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They're writing in my class is more like an e-mail than a memo, and and so it's interesting to watch their brains shift there and and maybe think about how they write an e-mail.

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Too, which is.

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A skill you know I think is crucial in our in our field, because we all know.

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We don't like.

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To pick up the phone anymore, right?

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We just write emails so.

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You're right, right. And then you know, I'd say another skill or competency however you want to look at, it is creativity and curiosity. You know, those are two things that I really focus on in my class. In fact, I have them pretend that, you know, they they get to pick a scandal in my class.

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Right about. But they have to pretend that they were the internal auditor at that company and they have to pretend that they are actually going to do an.

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Got it. Of whatever that you know, scandal was over whether it was an accounting, manipulation or whatever it was, they have to pretend to uncover it first, right? So identify what the risks are. What controls are missing? You know where the governance was lacking. And so to me, creativity is huge.

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And I think an internal audit that equates to thinking outside the box, you know we use that term a lot, but it is not doing it the way we did it last year. It's not following you know those same same procedure steps, it's thinking, OK, Let's 0 based on it, let's think, how can we attack this department topic, whatever it is?

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Is in a whole new way and so I think getting that curiosity and and creativity out is super important.

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What would you say that seasoned, experienced internal auditors can do to contribute towards developing the next generation of talent?

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Oh, I love this question because I love to involve my Denver, Iowa chapter friends and all the amazing network that I have built in in Denver where I am.

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In my classes I actually assign each one of my students a mentor in the community and it is such a great experience for not only the students to get to work with somebody other than me, that's actually out there doing, you know, doing the work, even though I feel like I'm still doing the work every day. But it's to meet somebody and they get to.

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Get their opinion on how to approach something so they actually work on a semester kind of half a semester long project with their mentor where they are issuing a project announcement. They are doing a risk control matrix. You know they are actually creating an audit report at the end of the day and they.

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Get to run all of that by their.

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For mentor, so it's a great communication lesson because they have to have two meetings with their professional, whether in person or virtual, and it just gets them outside of the normal things you do in a classroom. So and again, I know you asked about the the people in our community, they experienced auditors. I think it's great.

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To them.

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To remember what it's like to be newer and to have to break something down and explain it it honestly I think provides more aha moments to the mentors than it does the mentees. Sometimes. You know, I never, I never thought of this or doing it this way because students are also very creative.

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I had a a.

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Couple of students in that class actually use AI to help create their audit report after they had done all the work, we got some gorgeous audit reports and you don't usually think of audit reports as gorgeous, right? You're you're going. What is that word but just super cool one pagers you know, executive summary off to the left.

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You gotta, you know, I don't know some images. I just think you get such good different products from students and I think it was an AHA for some of my my professionals in the room.

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So.

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There's mutual kind of learning relationship too.

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Which is good.

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Absolutely. I actually have people asking me if they can do it next semester. So it's in the spring. So yeah, so it's nice when you have mentors that want to kind of knock on your door. So it's good, awesome. And that's also like an indirect plug for kudos to your chapter members and really the importance of their support because you do have a very.

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Active engaged group of chapter leaders over there and so and and that that helps tremendously. So that's awesome. How would you say that organizations can tap into a global talent pool to address the skill shortages that are in the internal audit process?

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So I think you know, in talking to all these mentors to kind of bring it back to them and really talking about how are they finding new staff. Number one, I think they are coming to universities more and more, which is great. It's great for programs like ours because.

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You know, I think there was this disconnect between employers.

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In, you know especially internal audit and universities, we weren't hiring directly from universities and I know this from experience, but I think that is finally shifting and changing a little bit. And I was actually able to get one of my undergrads into an internal audit internship. She had never done it before.

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And that's going to be her life career now. And just from this one company taking it a chance on an undergraduate, you know, still getting her her accounting degree, but really, really liked.

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My class, so I think.

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We're getting noticed finally. You know that that some of these universities actually have good internal audit programs and you don't have to wait to hire them. And I would say that the second thing that organizations need to do more and I had experience with this in my position in internal audit when I was the director is we hired from the business.

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And getting that business knowledge into internal audit is so important. I think we worry too much about audit experience.

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And we should focus more on business experience because I think we could teach people to audit and I think that's something I do every day.

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Right, I teach.

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Students, what an internal audit is about, and I think it's getting the right people with the right skills and you know, maybe that business knowledge. And so we had fantastic.

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Hiring people who are just interested in maybe going back to school or, you know, wanting to know more about internal audit. So I think organizations need to kind of poach people a little.

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Bit more I think it's.

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It's kind of the opposite. Some places, you know, I think some businesses, you know, look at the internal auditors as oh, they have great skills. They know so much about the business. You know, maybe they end up moving, leaving out of internal audit and going to work in the business. I think it needs to shift. I think we should pull pull from the.

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Business into internal.

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Audit. I think they just have the insights.

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Into the business that sometimes it's harder to get an intern on.

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Well, and then just to add to that, so as you are very familiar with our internal auditing education partnership programs, since MSU Denver is one of our I EP schools, we do have employers and organizations reach out to us all the time to kind of inquire and see what universities are affiliated and recognized by I.

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Global we're teaching internal audit curriculum and so we have those listed on our public sites and they can see MSU, Denver along with all of our other universities globally that are part of our academic partnership programs for teaching internal audit curriculum and really producing these outstanding internal audit.

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You know, ready graduate. So thanks for serving as one of our many IAP coordinators. You're awesome, Joe. And so we you've been recognized for that, for your leadership, for your mentorship. What final piece of advice would you give to young professionals that are entering the internal audit field?

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So I think one of the pieces of advice that I love to give students applies really in any field, honestly, but internal audit, the same is find a company that matches your values personally that you enjoy what they do, whether that's, you know, producing a good or some sort of service.

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I've just met so many people over my.

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Career that didn't even love the company they worked for. And so, you know, #1 to me is find that company that just feels like a good fit. You know, whether that's, you know, their company values or people everybody says people are really important. So you know, how can you get to know the people? Maybe go.

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You know, serve on a community service project with that company or or something to get to know the culture of that organization. Because I think that's huge and I.

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Think.

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For internal audit, it's even more important that you love the place you work, because then you're more passionate about what you are recommending and what you are selling and how you are influencing that company. If you've got that just a little bit more of a connection to it, I think you have such better passion in your career. So like for me, I think of it now.

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I love the university. I love serving the university. I love the mission to help students get access to higher Ed for for all students. So for me, I feel like I have this new passion to help MSU because.

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They love what they do and and love their mission so.

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I think that's.

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Just really, really important for everybody to remember.

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Well, thank you so much for all of the great advice, the great Insights, the biggest take away I have from this conversation is just the passion that you have for the profession, for your students. And I know that many anyone who's going to listen to this.

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Is going to feel the same because they're just as passionate about kind of paying it forward and really bringing awareness to this amazing field and.

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So thanks so much for joining me. You're awesome, Joe, and we appreciate everything and all of your insight.

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Thank you. I appreciate everything that IA does to support US, universities, chapters everything. So thanks Desiree.

00:20:36

In bonus content, Jarrick Mediavilla joins Robert Pets to discuss the challenges of keeping content fresh and relevant for a global audience.

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Eric, thank you so much for joining me.

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Today, thank you so much for inviting me.

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Tell me what is your role precisely in the curriculum department?

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My title is curriculum quality specialist, so as you can imagine the IAA being a global organization, we have several units to serve our Members, one of them being member competency and learning.

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And as the name suggests, our role is to ensure that our Members are staying competent and that we provide all the learning opportunities for them to continue their professional development careers. So part of my job as a curriculum quality specialist.

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Is to ensure that we provide, we create and provide all of these.

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Resources or courses that internal auditors will need year over year to continue improving their skills and upskilling or their advancement in their careers.

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So before we get into the detail of just how that content is developed, can you share with me a little bit about how many hours of course work is offered by the IEA on an annual basis?

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Currently, we offer over 50 ILT courses, ILT stands for instructor LED training. So if you have ever taken an in person course we have over 50 courses of of that nature and we also offer over 80 on demand courses.

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Which are the ones?

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That are self-paced that you take at your own time and if your Wi-Fi allows it right, you can on your own on your own time at your own pace. And we have topics from basic or fundamentals of internal auditing all the way to the current topics that we are discussing which is.

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Cybersecurity, AI and such.

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Because you and I both the work at IAA quarters creating content, we both benefit from having access to a lot of professional experience here in the build.

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We have CIAS and former CAES to help guide and validate the content, but often you go beyond that as well, correct?

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Correct that the beauty of an organization like the IEA and the services provided for its members is that the IAEA has been around for over 80 years, so we benefit from a long standing relationship with so many business partners.

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That we have been able to help develop their own careers so we are able to tap into those business partners in order to recruit subject matter experts. Sometimes we do have in-house subject matter experts in our own organization, but it is it is a beauty.

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To have that opportunity to bring these professionals that are actually in the industry that have real experiences, who can provide specific scenarios and specific experiences for our internal auditors, especially the new.

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Points.

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That includes some of our principal partners such as Deloitte and EY and PwC, correct.

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OK.

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To name to name a few, right.

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Right. As you mentioned, the coursework is offered in different formats, whether it's instructor LED or online or on demand. How challenging is it to develop content for both audio?

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It's an interesting question, Robert, and fortunately for our team, most of us come from the classroom. We are former teacher or we have specific training as teachers. I myself have a masters degree in instructional design, so it is part of my career to always make sure that I create.

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The learning environment for anyone now. Am I an internal auditor? No. But because I am in the learning industry, I team up with a subject matter expert.

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And we make sure that the content that is relevant that is objective driven is employed and is delivered in a way that is pertinent for all our Members and that includes different modes, which it could include the person or.

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1.

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And.

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We serve a global community, yes. So we have to make sure that all our learning materials serve that purpose of speaking basically to everyone in a global on a global level. So it is, it is challenging for sure.

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And you and I have talked a little bit about this already in the sense that you want to make sure that they've got that proper learning environment when they do finally get the materials and that's something that goes into your consideration as well in terms of making sure that folks who sometimes aren't professional educators have the structure have the information they need to execute those learning.

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Correct. And we have fantastic facilitators and again like I stressed before, they they come with this beauty of experience from from years working in the industry and that is so valuable and all we provide is the guidelines for them to make sure that the participants.

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Receive all the information and that they are set up for success, which is our mission.

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And to be sure, that also includes making sure that we meet all the nazma qualifications to make those learnings as qualified or certified.

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Absolutely, absolutely. All our courses are NASA compliant and to that point, one of the most interesting aspects of what we do at the product development unit is we are always keeping our ears close to the ground when it comes to what Members are saying.

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Members are needing and it is important that this message comes across because we are actually paying attention and making the adjustments that are necessary.

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So it serves.

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Better to our facilitators and our Members because we are here for our Members.

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And what kind of feedback do you get maybe in terms of that or other types of feedback that we get on our forces type?

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Fortunately, we have always had a good a good amount of good feedback when it comes to our participants, including our facilitators. We we are very proud of the work that we put into our courseware, especially because we are receiving the information that it is serving their purposes.

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Especially as they continue growing in their own industries and their own.

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Companies and and we are part of their success.

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Excellent. So one final question, jerk, tell me what's.

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The best part of your job?

00:27:57

The best part of my job? Well as as a former teacher, you are always a teacher, right? And one of the things that excites me the most, it's always the opportunity of learning something new and being in this role allows me to be among.

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There's so many professionals in the internal audit industry that I can learn from and that allows me to learn what their experience is, especially since internal auditors, they are everywhere, in every industry that we can imagine, right? It's not only banking, it's not only government.

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There's so many applications of internal audit.

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Today and and we get to learn from all of that right. And I feel like that learning and that passion for learning is what really drives our engines whenever we are developing new courses and updating our courses. So I hope that that passion translates into all the materials.

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And everything that we put forward for the benefit of our Members.

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Thanks.

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Again, Eric, thank you so much for joining.

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Me today and speaking.

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Thank you.

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