COVID-19’s Impact on Internal Audit

2021 North American Pulse of Internal Audit: Many Sides of Crisis

COVID-19 continues to pose significant health and economic challenges, despite new hopes for widespread vaccinations. The pandemic’s effect on organizations and internal audit have been varied. The 2021 North American Pulse of Internal Audit: Many Sides of Crisis shows this disparity in the opportunities the pandemic produced, as well in the costs it extracted. The pandemic’s effects on internal audit were noted across a broad spectrum of reliable Pulse survey metrics, including internal audit budgets, staffing, risk assessments, and audit plans.

While the pandemic’s impacts varied by industry, Pulse survey results consistently show the effects on internal audit were less severe than for the organization overall. 

“The pandemic created an open audition for internal audit to showcase its value, particularly in response to the crisis management and business continuity risks at the onset of the pandemic,” according to the report. “Indeed, responses from CAEs who reported staffing increases support that, for some, pandemic responses expanded the profession’s scope of work. In aggregate, the pandemic’s impacts were less than initially anticipated by internal audit leaders.”

The IIA’s Audit Executive Center (AEC) has gathered insight from leaders in the profession through the annual Pulse of Internal Audit survey since 2009. Each survey collects information and perceptions from internal audit leadership, primarily chief audit executives (CAEs) and directors/senior managers of internal audit across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

This is what Richard Chambers has to say about it in his blog:
"We Are All in the Same Storm, But Not the Same Boat".

Read more and download 2021 North American Pulse of Internal Audit at:
https://www.theiia.org/Pulse