The Diversity Lie

So it turns out that diversity is a lie. We have been told since birth to just be ourselves, but no one ever wanted us to be unique. People who are different are isolated, ridiculed, and pushed out. Professional settings are no different.

In internal audit, we have a interesting diversity dilemma. In most of the teams I’ve worked with over the years, I have seen consistent examples of diversity in race and gender identity among auditors. I personally have only worked directly for female leaders in my career. The dilemma I’m referring to is the bias toward accounting and finance professionals.

In most audit departments, the talent pool is filled with individuals from limited backgrounds and usually from just one or two colleges. In my first audit department, we hired predominantly accounting majors who had interned with Big 4 accounting firms, who had attended Miami University (OH) or University of Kentucky .The same was true for nearly all other internal audit departments in Cincinnati. This practice creates a knowledge vacuum. You have brought in a limited world view to tackle a wide variety of issues.

I recently had the opportunity to work with a professor from the University of Toronto. He stressed this point with an example from the sciences. Einstein came up with his theory of relativity from his work with time tables across distances while he was a patent clerk. His diversity of experience added greatly to another school of through.

I was not an accounting or finance major. I studied literature and past cultures. I did get an MBA for the foundation business knowledge, but my training as an English major helped much more. English majors are taught to decipher complex documents, formulate a theory, and then defend that theory to a group. Auditors operate in much the same way. We investigate a document, identify issues, and then defend these ideas to management, I am a better auditor because of my background.

When we look at the long term impact of stacking departments with accounting and finance professional, we can see how the practice shifts in some organizations. Especially when the CAE is from an accounting role, the emphasis is often on financial report (like SOX) and accounting audits. For internal auditors, this is only a small section of the operations that should be under our review. Our role is broad based assurance for operations that include accounting, technology, compliance, fraud, logistics, culture, and so many more risk areas.

If your department is now working as an extension of external audit, it is time to challenge the CAE, audit committee, and anyone else who is promoting such a narrow definition of internal audit.