Lean Auditing: Driving Added Value and Efficiency in Internal Audit

22 A Brief Look into the Future

Over the course of this book I hope that the reader has gained encouragement that there is a considerable body of progressive, value adding practice in internal audit across many organizations and many countries. I happen to have chosen examples predominantly from the UK and Europe, the US and Australia, where I spend a fair amount of time, but I know I could fill another book with good practices from other countries. Progressive, value adding internal audit really is out there, right now, it’s just not evenly distributed across all audit functions or all countries at the moment!

At the time of completing the final manuscript for this book, the IIA have issued a consultation on a new mission for the Internal Auditing profession. In it there is a suggestion that there should be a clearer mission for the profession overall and currently it is proposed this should be to “enhance and protect organizational value” – suggesting lean principles and practices will remain relevant as the profession moves into the future.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not saying that the future of internal auditing should solely be oriented around lean, but I hope that this book has made a reasonably strong case for taking lean principles seriously when thinking about how we might reimagine internal audit in the future. It is vital that we do not take lean so much to heart that we create a straightjacket for the audit profession. I hope that, throughout this book, ...