At the bottom of this post is a screen shot from the new publication Ethics and Pressure, Balancing the Internal Audit Profession, published primarily from the 2015 global practitioner survey of internal auditors worldwide. This is a really big survey. What do you think of the screen shot? Is it appropriate for management to evaluate the chief audit executive (“CAE”)? I say “yes,” of course.

I note however, that the writer also says “Exhibit 9 indicates that this responsibility [i.e., the responsibility for evaluating the performance of the CAE] is generally split evenly between management and the board. The big exception is in North America, where 61% of CAE’s are formally evaluated by management. Often however, these evaluations are reviewed by an audit committee.”

Let me just say, and I read a fair amount of materials from or relating to the internal audit profession, these sentences from the writer probably speak volumes. Do you mean to say that the audit committee isn’t always also doing its own evaluation of internal audit? I really hope that’s not what the writer is saying.

If you are on an audit committee, do you evaluate the performance of the CAE and of the internal audit function (if you have an internal audit function)? I certainly hope so. I mean, regardless of how internal audit operates with management, as an audit committee member aren’t you interacting with internal audit also, and isn’t internal audit helping you to satisfy your due diligence responsibilities? If not, you really need to sit down and think about how the audit committee is using internal audit.

And, if you are an internal audit CAE or member, if the audit committee isn’t sufficiently interested in you to evaluate your performance and how you help or don’t help the audit committee, then you are really missing the boat with a significant entity (i.e., the audit committee) that you should be helping.

In fact, most of the materials that I read from internal audit miss the boat, in my opinion. Yes, management’s use and interaction with internal audit is very important, but the audit committee really should value and make use of the availability of internal audit to help the audit committee satisfy it’s duties. If this isn’t happening, both the audit committee and internal audit are missing out on a tremendous opportunity. It might also be argued that both are failing to satisfy their responsibilities.

Here’s the screen shot from the survey and discussion: