Mastering Risk Management

INDEPENDENT ASSURANCE AND INTERNAL AUDIT

The audit or assurance function sees the whole firm, including its behaviours. Lord Smith of Kelvin wrote an article in Audit and Risk magazine, which was entitled, ‘The canary in the mineshaft’.21 It’s the job of the assurance people to sniff the cultural winds, in the way canaries in mines were used to warn about lethal gases before there was a crisis.

We talk more about independent assurance in Chapter 13, but it is worth taking some time to think about assurance and its involvement in culture. Increasingly firms integrate culture as part of an audit. Are behavioural outcomes as expected? Are appraisals and remuneration consistent? Are values disseminated and adopted at all stages of the employee ...