Cost challenges in this and future budget years may restrict co-sourcing and outsourced budgets, increasing the need to upweight skills for in-house teams. If this is your reality, how are you managing it? What are your plans for the immediate future? Is your mind open or closed to diverse possibilities and new beginnings?

Without prejudice, this article asks if the challenges that organisations may face post-pandemic could be the springboard for the next evolution of internal audit. Now is the time to begin opening our minds to new beginnings and new possibilities, whatever they may look like.

What the future may look like for the profession is top of the agenda for the Chartered Institute. A major project is in progress recognising the scale of the challenge. This article is independently written and does not seek to pre-empt the findings of the project in any way.

As a profession, are we at risk of being disrupted by external factors or is this an opportunity to be proactive disruptors, ensuring positive change for internal auditors including CAEs?

Visualisation can help unlock our minds. Imagine for a moment being in a hypothetical brainstorm session where one of the off-the-wall ideas for internal audit is raised and what it might look like - a hybrid of the gig economy and freelancing.

Understanding the foundations

Latest research by the Department of Business and Innovation found that in 2018 almost 3million people were part of the gig economy: ‘the exchange of labour for money between individuals or companies via digital platforms that actively facilitate matching between providers and customers, on a short-term and payment by task basis.’

According to IPSE, a not-for-profit association for the self-employed, there were 2.2 million freelancers in 2020. Freelance is a sub-set of the self-employed comprising the top three…