I try to make the dry subject of internal control easy to understand with this analogy. Did you put on the alarm and lock the door when you left home this morning? If you did, you not only have a sound personal ‘internal control’ system, but it is working. If you forgot to put on…
Some mystery exists around risks not recognised by a few but recognised by many. The mystery arises from those who decide NOT to include them as risks. For instance out of the eight pharmaceutical companies I compared [1], six included the risk of not being able to hire and keep key employees, while two did…
Non-accountants might consider it logical that audit reports in the UK are seven times longer, than those in USA or Europe, sometimes even longer. [1] After all, auditors in the UK certify that financial statements are TRUE and fair whereas they only need to certify they are FAIR elsewhere, or to be more precise fairly…
One real risk relates to cyber security. Companies today cannot survive without adequate cyber protection. This risk gives them a chance to spray buzzwords in their risk statement, to fill out its importance and to show how serious it really is. The list is long: ‘cyber attack, malicious intrusion, breakdown, destruction, loss of data privacy,…