Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a certified internal auditor and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A certified internal auditor is an accountant who conducts internal audits in an organization. It is offered to an accountant who has passed the four-part exam which includes the superior knowledge of issues, risks, and remedies about internal audits. He/she evaluates how well the company can manage risks as well as how well the internal processes are working.
Other important duties includes providing ad hoc advice and guidance to managers and staff at all levels, attending meetings with other auditors to ensure they develop an understanding of different business processes, providing support to management on how to handle new opportunities, researching and assessing how well risk management processes are working while recording the results
Core Skills Required to be a Certified Internal Auditor
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A certified internal auditor should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Troubleshooting:
Troubleshooting is solving a problem or determining a question to an issue which is often applied to repairing failed products or processes on a machine or a system.
A Certified Internal Auditor must be able to diagnose any trouble in the management flow caused by a failure of any kind and determine to remedy the causes of the symptoms with the final product being the confirmation that the solution restores the process to an excellent working state.
Accuracy:
Accuracy refers to the closeness of a measured value to a known value or standard that is passed by the governing laws.
A Certified Internal Auditor has to always be accurate with figures and data used and required in the office without any guesswork or estimations to facilitate precise and correct information in every department creating an authentic environment that will be respected by the workers.
Judgment Skills:
Judgment is the ability to make a decision or form an opinion wisely especially in matters affecting action, good sense and discretion.
A Certified Internal Auditor must be a person of good judgment with the ability to make the right decision at the right time and for right reasons especially in prioritizing the work correctly to focus on a few important things and ensure excellent results are delivered.
Knowledge of Job:
Knowledge of Job is essential to every employee who needs to have a clear understanding of how their jobs fit into the overall organization to eliminate carelessness and laxity.
A Certified Internal Auditor must be able to evaluate this criterion when selecting an employee and know the common descriptions of a person with either right or inadequate knowledge of the job early enough to either keep them or let them go.
Multi-Tasking:
Multi-Tasking allows one to juggle and perform more than one task at a time without losing track of what you are working on or dropping the ball.
A Certified Internal Auditor must learn the trick of multitasking and help the staff balance the competing demands of their time and energy that they are expected to handle multiple priorities every day without compromising on the effectiveness of the work done.
Decision Making:
Decision Making is the art of making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information and assessing alternative resolutions before settling on one.
A Certified Internal Auditor cannot afford to make poor decisions, that's why he ought to develop a systematic approach to decision making that allows him to make every decision with skill, confidence, and wisdom producing a final choice of competence in the workplace.
Performance Management:
Performance Management is a method by which supervisors and employees work together to plan, monitor and review the employee's work objectives and overall contributions to the organization.
A Certified Internal Auditor should invest in performance management to shift the focus from the annual reports to a more continuous form of accountability by implementing periodic meetings while ensuring a continual push for progress rather than an immediate rush to meet objectives during the review time.
Flexibility:
Flexibility is an important skill that allows employers and employees to make an arrangement about working on maintaining a work/life balance to help organizations improve the productivity and efficiency of their balance.
A Certified Internal Auditor needs creative ideas on how to plan flexible schedules for all his employees by incorporating flexible working arrangements and individual flexibility agreements that allow negotiation to change how certain agreements apply to them and how they can be adjusted.
Self Confidence:
Self Confidence is the ability to know who you are and what you are capable of doing which shows in your behavior, your body language, how you speak, etc.
A Certified Internal Auditor must be confident enough to inspire confidence in others while encouraging them to handle daily tasks and their personal lives with self-confidence that will, in turn, produce a well-rounded individual.
Knowledge Management:
Knowledge Management is the ability to manage knowledge and information that is presented to the company from different sources without overlooking any of them.
A Certified Internal Auditor ought to creatively channel all the new information, tools, input, and methodology mean by actively practicing the art of knowledge management within the business by harnessing the organization's inherent wisdom's platform in one place.
Hard Skills Required to be a Certified Internal Auditor
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A certified internal auditor should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.