Hello boys and girls and welcome to Mr. Auditing’s Neighborhood. Did you have a nice day, today? I bet you did. Did you remember to tell all your friends about the wonderful things you learned about internal audit? I’ll bet you did. And did everyone look at you a little funny and back away slowly? I’ll bet they did. Don’t worry. Some day you’ll be doing audits and writing reports about how ineffective their operations are and they’ll all wish they had been nicer to you. 

It’s the end of January and I’m still working my way through some of the various top 10/50/100 lists that proliferate at year-end. I have before me one that is a little different. Trust Across America has provided a list of the “Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior 2012”. 

First, in the spirit of full disclosure: I work for Farmers Insurance which is owned by Zurich Financial Services. I don’t have a dog in this hunt, but wanted to start by getting that one on the table. Okay, moving on…) Something a little different today  as I swerve dangerously close to covering a subject that might be considered real audit work. (No comments from my various co-workers who, right now, are indicating surprise that anything I do would swerve anywhere near audit work.) But a recent study caught my attention.

(“Wake up.” “Wha..wha...”   “Wake up. Everyone else has already started.” “They wha…Started what?” “In fact, everyone else is already done!” “Done with what?” “You know, it’s probably way too late now anyway. What have you been doing?” “Working real hard. Really. Honest. Working real hard.  And too late to do what?” “To do your first post of the year. You know the one – look back at the year, accomplishments, top ten, the good, the bad, yadda, yadda, yadda.” “But I really wanted to do one.” “Too late now – it’s mid-January.   You can’t do a retrospective in the middle of the month.” “Well, I’ve never let things like that stop me before.”)

As promised, a holiday poem.

As promised, today’s auditing carol is a song in praise of our customer – the auditee.

Fill your cup with gingerbread lattes, make up a batch of your favorite holiday cookies, and join us in the glow of the computer screen as we sing another auditing carol. (Is it me, or are these getting darker?)

For today’s audit carol, a song from the Broadway hit “The Sound of Auditing” which has become an auditing carol classic.

A little something special this holiday week. For the next few days, some holiday carols. In addition, if all goes well, a special treat at the end of the week. (If you have any trouble figuring out the tunes, let me know.)

We’ve visited this topic before, but here are a few more quotes from some of the greatest internal audit movies of all time: