Robert Berry

Robert (That Audit Guy) Berry is a risk, compliance and auditing advocate, educator and innovator. He helps good professionals become better by creating articles, web services and training that allow them to expand their knowledge network.

How Happy Are Your Audit Clients? Ask Them!

Anyone providing products or services to customers should want to know what customers think about the product/services. Internal Auditors typically solicit feedback through client satisfaction surveys. There are a variety of ways to solicit opinions including live interviews and questionnaires. Successful questionnaires will help audit functions determine how well they are achieving goals and objectives. Many auditor simply copy surveys from other departments. I believe auditors must create surveys specifically for their operating environment. Successful surveys must consider the Stakeholders, the Questions and the Re

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4 Audit Client Types

I recently wrote about 4 different auditor personality types. This article received a lot of visits, votes and comments. Check it out if you have not already. The purpose of that article was to identify some of the personality traits that we as auditors exhibit. Because communication is a two way street, today I want to discuss 4 audit client personality types. We must recognize

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What keeps you up at night…Who Cares!

Early in my career, I had an audit client teach me a valuable lesson. He taught me (1) there is power in the questions we ask (2) not all clients are forth coming with information and (3) as auditors we need to learn to ask better questions. We were interviewing the client as part of our preliminary planning. The more senior auditors on the engagement directed the questioning. Of course they asked the most popular and probably the least useful question that many auditors ask…What keeps you up at night? The client responded, “Nothing, I sleep very well”. While this was not the ideal answer, it made me question how we “question”. I understand the intent of the “what keeps you up” question. We really want to attempt to understand if our clients have any concerns. But let’s face it, we are auditors. Many clients are not 100% forthcoming. I believe that there are 6 better questions

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3 Types of Fraud Figures & How to Recognize and Repel Them

I am not sure if there are more people committing fraud, more getting caught, better fraud news coverage or a combination of all, but there seems to be new fraud stories hitting the headlines daily. There seems to be no shortage of individuals willing to risk their freedom and reputation for a few dollars. They range from small to large dollar amounts, to elaborate & sophisticated or simplistic & stupid. Take for example

1. The million dollar Michigan lottery winner who was recently sentenced to probation for receiving $5,475 in food assistance after winning.
2. The convicted rapist who continued to apply for housing benefits

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Overcoming the 5 Classic Myths About Internal Auditing

In a recent article, Richard Chambers, IIA CEO, identified the following “Five Classic Myths About Internal Auditing”

Internal auditors are accountants by training.
Auditors are nit-pickers and fault-finders.
It’s best not to tell the auditors anything unless they specifically ask.
Internal auditors follow a cycle in selecting their audit “targets” and use standard checklists so they can audit the same things the same way each time.
Internal audit is the corporate “police function.”

These “myths” are spot on. But how do we overcome the

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