Building a Better Auditor: The Audit Leap

When you take a calculated leap, whether by auditing an unfamiliar business area, introducing a new data analytics platform, or championing continuous auditing, you send powerful signals to your organization. You demonstrate that you are future-focused and engaged with emerging risks before they become crises.

Most importantly, you position yourself as a leader who is willing to shape conversations that influence the organization’s direction and create positive change. For example, when I first started working on a continuous auditing project, it gave us early indicators of what to focus on. This also changed how leadership involved internal audit in strategic initiatives.

Identifying Your Leap Opportunity

A leap in internal audit doesn’t have to be dramatic. You don’t need to overhaul the entire audit plan or take on a company-wide transformation single-handedly. Often, the most impactful leaps start small but are driven by intention.

Consider taking on opportunities such as volunteering to lead a project outside your traditional audit scope or auditing a process no one has reviewed before to uncover insights and risks previously overlooked.

Other opportunities include proposing a risk assessment workshop that uses a new approach to engage stakeholders or introducing a visual dashboard of audit findings for senior leadership, making results more accessible. You could also partner with the data analytics teams to test automated control monitoring.

The key is alignment: Choose something with genuine organizational value and tied to a known or emerging need. For example, for the UAE Internal Auditors Association, I volunteered to be part of a local chapter focused on environmental, social and governance topics — which is outside of my usual focus.

Balancing Between Risk and Readiness

Leaps come with uncertainty. As internal auditors, we’re trained to assess risks (and not to take them). Hence, when we step outside our comfort zone, natural hesitations arise.

Common challenges could include:

• Stakeholder resistance: “We’ve always done it this way.”
• Resource constraints: Limited budget, data access, or personnel.
• Potential for failure: Fear that the new approach won’t deliver as promised.

These risks are real, but they can be managed effectively if approached in a systematic manner. One way to strengthen your case is to back up your ideas with evidence, benchmarks, and examples drawn from other organizations or industries. Another effective approach is to secure buy-in from champions within management or related functions before presenting the initiative to a broader audience.

Start small by piloting the initiative in a controlled environment before moving to a full-scale rollout. Throughout the process, ensure that all aspects are documented. Record the benefits, challenges, and lessons learned, even if the outcomes are mixed, as this information will be invaluable for refining the approach and demonstrating accountability.

By applying the same rigor we bring to audits, we can mitigate the professional risks of our own bold moves.

From Leap to Lasting Impact

The immediate success or failure of a leap isn’t the only measure of its value. Often, the greatest returns are less tangible but far more enduring:

• Credibility. You build a reputation for initiative and problem-solving.
• Visibility. Decision-makers see you as someone who can contribute beyond the audit checklist.
• Influence. Your voice carries more weight in strategic discussions.
• Confidence. You develop the resilience to handle bigger challenges in the future.

Shaping a Culture of Constructive Risk-Taking

Taking professional leaps isn’t just an individual growth strategy — It can transform the culture of an internal audit function. When team members see leaders and peers experimenting with new tools, exploring emerging risk areas, or refining reporting methods, it creates a ripple effect.

This culture doesn’t happen by accident. Internal audit leaders can actively foster it by encouraging experimentation within clearly defined parameters, allowing teams to explore innovative approaches without compromising integrity.

They can recognize efforts and lessons learned (not just final outcomes), so that value is placed on the process as well as the results. Creating safe spaces for proposing unconventional ideas helps remove the fear of judgment, while sharing stories of both successes and failures normalizes the learning process and reinforces that growth often comes through iteration. In this environment, taking a leap becomes a shared value, not an isolated act of courage.

In internal audit, we are often seen as the steady hands guiding organizations through uncertainty. But steady doesn’t have to mean static. Strategic and well-considered leaps can expand our impact and accelerate our careers.

Opportunities to take these leaps will come. Sometimes subtly, sometimes with urgency. The real question is whether we’ll recognize them and have the courage to act.