Last week, the globally popular business comic strip “Dilbert” took on management’s perception of/reaction to internal auditors. Like all Dilbert strips, there is enough truth in the punchline to grab our attention and be provocative. I must admit that I smiled. I certainly encountered management officials who didn’t want me, or my internal audit team, poking around in their departments. But we always reached some agreement.
After my initial amusement at the comic strip, I asked myself: Why does management so frequently assume that we are just there to “find problems?” I even had managers look me in the eye and say, “I know you have to find something wrong to justify the audit.” I sometimes felt that they looked at us like we do a traffic police officer. We often wonder if they have a quota on the number of traffic citations they have to deliver. It is my fervent hope that the day will come when we are universally appreciated for helping to “prevent” problems rather than “finding” them.