Even now, I firmly believe that the potential for the Y2K disaster was real. The only reason that its effects were minimized was a result of the hundreds of thousands of hours spent checking and rechecking programming code to address the “00” year problem before it occurred. For those of you too young to remember, prior to the year 2000, many databases and applications only used two digits for the…
Analysis had proven to be successful in not only supporting the conduct phase of internal auditors but also during the planning phase. More and more we were being asked by audit teams to perform analytics to support the development of the audit scope and objectives. However, there were still team leaders that avoided the use of analytics. “Analytics won’t be of any use in this audit” was still a familiar…
The analytics team was now at three people – so I could build some overlap in our knowledge of the application systems that were we accessing on a regular basis. For example, this meant that I was no longer the only person who understood the financial system. Now we had at least two people for each of the 10-12 systems we were accessing on a regular basis. For all but…
Analytics in audit attracts people from a variety of backgrounds and I am no different in that regard. I started my career as a games room supervisor at the Boys and Girls Club and worked my way up to a guidance counsellor position. I was mainly working with disadvantaged children (and some juvenile delinquents) ages 6 –17. While the work was rewarding, the pay was not. I was working about…