In a wide-ranging interview, Paul Boyle, a Former Chief Officer for Aviva, talks about a range of topics including board committees, preparing future leaders, good practice for internal audit and advocating for the profession.

He suggests that sitting on board level committees is a key factor in driving the commercial awareness and critical thinking of audit leaders due to talking to executives about the big issues and the need to provide an internal audit perspective on them, “it is the place where you can have the biggest impact as that is where the biggest decisions are made.”

Reflecting on highlights across an extensive career, he details two approaches audit leaders can adopt to demonstrate the value of internal audit: strengthening the first line of defence and using assurance maps.

Boyle talks about auditing culture and notes that audit leaders should apply a degree of caution. “It’s not really the place of internal audit to lead the conversation on what the culture should be, the start point of an audit would be to ask the question, has the board defined the culture it would like and how well has that been communicated” he says.

Audit leaders and those aspiring to be leaders will find this podcast particularly interesting.…