When the only experiences i had with audit was “preparing” and being the primary lead auditor comes as part of the role (other than system implementation), it felt like jumping into the deep end of the pool in august 2020.  Very grateful for all the coaching from mentors and leaders.

The journey, explained with the Shu-Ha-Ri model

守 /Learn

I will be forever grateful to my predecessor for the ever huge opportunities to improve our system and culture for assurance, without which the learning curve would have been much less steep and my personal growth would not have benefited from the challenges faced.

I picked up the phone to get advise from an old friend who was a consultant in ISO IMS implementation and got a good awakening reminder that the intention of an audit is to provide assurance, and assurance is about giving confidence, hence it is imperative that audits focuses first on compliance verification then improvements.

The above unlocked the questions i had for my internal subject matter experts(sme) who had guided me to better strategise and build strategies around planning (audit program), executing, reporting, learning. At that point, i didnt understand what i was doing. I was given a template and i implemented without question. The most important assurances i did was verification with the leaders and smes.

In 2021,we had a reorganization and our business had new partners, i had a new counterpart and new sme. They had new ideas of how things should be done, it was a painful migration because while i already knew what i was doing, i struggled to tweak my work to make life easier for myself and everyone.

破 /Detatch

Fast forward to 2022 end, i had a reality check when it was my turn to be audited. It was truly exciting to realise how far we had come in 2 years. While reading my audit reports from 2020 and mid 2022,the auditor was diplomatec enough to say “Edward, based on your first few audit reports… You have come a long way”.

From then, i was given the findings on a number of areas i needed to focus on (about 13 actions). I struggled with them as we entered turnaround, but by this time, i had started standing on my own and sme are more of my sounding board and coach rather than teachers. Id share where we are and they would ask pointed questions helping me think through the solutions.

离 /Transcend

Now, at Q3 2024,exactly 4 years from when i joined, ive clocked over 30days of internal audit, planned 3 years of assurances, the role even survived 2 rounds of reorganization globally and locally, im happy to see the structure built, and now the focus is on setting up a simpler and simpler process for my successors.

The lessons that had been learnt and updated into our framework and sop are to sustain the structure. But there are much that still needs to be simplified to meet the same intentions with the least amount of effort possible.

In the remaining days i have in this role (I’m planning to move on next opportunity), i will focus on simplification using the citizen developer platforms provided by our company, combined with integration of tool to process, making the journey from a new auditor to an assurance lead as smooth as reasonably possible.

The insights and experiences gathered over the years (not just for  assurance) provided a strong foundation to my belief in the infallible process of shu ha ri being mandatory for anyone wishing to reach mastery. If the intent is to expose and have appreciation, it really depends how deep one wishes to go.  There are those who work on mastery, and those who work on appearing masterful.  Food for thought.

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