What would be an easy to remember elevator speech for internal audit? I recently posed that question to the Regents Fiscal Affairs and Audit Committee.

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Together with the audit directors from the other Regents universities, I meet annually with the Kansas Board of Regents Fiscal Affairs and Audit Committee to apprise the committee of internal audit activities and plans at WSU. When I begin my presentation by asking the committee a question, good discussion and feedback usually follows.

For this year’s meeting, I asked each committee member to think of an elevator speech should another board member ask what internal auditors do. Their responses included finding or preventing “screw-ups,” assessing risk, reviewing controls and processes, looking for efficiencies and verifying compliance. These are important, but including all of them in an elevator speech would be a little awkward.

To narrow the focus of internal audit's purpose, I shared five quotes with the committee:

1. "I don't try to find people doing things wrong; I try to help people do their jobs better."
2. "I'm helping the organization achieve its objectives."
3. "We are about making others excel."
4. "The purpose of internal audit is to make things better."
5. "We only exceed when we are a true partner, helping our organizations drive towards excellence."

All five quotes are attributable to Mike Jacka via his Mind of Jacka blog and any of them could serve as an elevator speech for internal audit. In sum, by helping solve problems we help others and we help our universities become better!

The regent's comment about finding or preventing screw-ups provided a segue to discuss how poor risk management (screw-ups) can divert resources away from a university's mission, or the mission of its individual colleges, departments or programs.

But while preventing screw-ups is clearly important, internal audit's principal focus is to make things better.