Internal audit's ability to serve as a trusted advisor to its primary stakeholder is key to organizational success.
Trusted advisor relationships are all the rage nowadays. Consultants in various industries have made a case for their services as trusted advisors, and the term has become part of the lexicon of internal audit. But does anyone really know what it means? No listing for it can be found in a dictionary, though informal definitions include words like mentor, guru, and go to. Given the term’s nebulous meaning, why are internal auditors so determined to promote themselves this way? And without a universal definition, how do they know they have achieved trusted advisor status?
