Viewpoint Could the internal audit team at News Corp have identified and clamped down on the illegal activities of their journalists?  Todd Davies doesn’t think so. The News of the World scandal is causing ripple effects around the world, with commentators in Australia and abroad beginning to ask questions about News Corp’s corporate governance. They [...]

IIA standards suggest that an internal audit function should have an independent assessment of their function every five years to assess their level of compliance with the IIA’s standards. Despite this being recognised as better practice and being a regulatory requirement in some sectors, less than 50% of internal audit functions in Australia are having [...]

In the various CAE roundtables we’ve done in Australia, one of the constant themes is that there often is a large experience gap between the head of internal audit and their direct reports. This is often not deliberate, but is a result of different skillsets required to execute the plan and lead the function.  The [...]

Todd is a highly sought after keynote speaker, commentator and  thought leader in fields of business, risk, governance and internal audit. He is a regular commentator on topics such as emerging risk, resilience and makes an effort to stretch people’s thinking, help define leading practice and point out the ‘elephants in the room’ in these [...]

Thanks to Lexis Nexis for making my most recent article available from the current issue of Risk Management Today to my clients and readers. The article reviews the latest benchmarking study from IIA and Protiviti of 160 heads of internal audit from around Australia and draws out three key themes of interest to those charged with [...]

I’m pleased to be chairing a discussion panel at Australasia’s leading internal audit conference on leading practice and models for risk management, internal audit and audit committees in the public sector. Given the major reforms in Queensland and New South Wales in the past 18 months, we will  have a focus on their changes, which [...]

In the course of my work with various clients and committees, the nature of internal audit opinions continues to be a misunderstood area. Even with carefully defined scopes, roles and responsibilities there appears to be a regular expectation gap between the level of assurance given by internal audit teams, and that understood by those relying [...]

After two years working with the Institute of Internal Auditors as their national Technical and Policy Director in Australia, I’ve had a lot of inquiries on why I was moving on, and what’s next. Risk Magazine Magazine (Australia) published an interview with me this week – Davies Leaves on a High - which covers this in [...]

Strategic risk capability is one of the key capabilities of our time. As part of their ongoing roles, Directors and CEOs need to have a deep understanding of the strategic risks and opportunties facing their organisations.  Increasingly they are looking to their internal audit team for a view on whether their company’s risk management systems [...]

Despite internal audit sourcing now being a mature product, we are surprised to find the number of organisations which still struggle to get the right outcome from their sourcing relationship. Due to popular demand TDA is now offering advice in this area. For more information, click here.