relevance protects you from technological obsolescence.
by alan anderson, cpa
transforming audit for the future
the days of delivering an audit report months after year-end are numbered. how relevant is an audit report when it’s months after the fact? even when we move to continuous audit – which will happen sooner than you think – it will still be historical information. but what will make it more relevant is that it will be delivered more timely, even if we don’t change much about how we perform the audit.
more: how ‘business expert cpas’ get their own business wrong | say adios to audit fee pressure | eight items to cover in the audit exit to deepen client relationships and prove value | know your three audit w’s | planning lays the foundation of audit relevance | how do we drive relevance in audit? | before the audit: more than just planning | are you correctly identifying the relevance intersection? | lack of relevance drives audit commoditization | five crucial attributes for successful audit leadership | traditional audits don’t deserve premium billing | four basic understandings every auditor must master
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if you’re taking the time to understand the workings of the business, how that business works in relation to the industry, and how it serves its customers, you’re on the path to providing true relevance. that’s how you move into advisory and assurance. if you provide that baseline level of relevance and then build more real-time techniques and tools, you can expand on that knowledge base of the industry and the operating environment. then you can give your clients even more advice and suggestions for what they do.
doing that will improve audits big time because when you know your client and the industry, you know where the risks and opportunities are.
when you thread relevance through every part of the work, your team isn’t just ticking and tying repetitively. your team sees how their work impacts the client, and they’re more engaged in the work. they’re using their whole brains to do the work.
in a tight job market, as we have had for decades, the smartest and most ambitious auditors will look for the best opportunities for them professionally and personally. firms with a reputation for mentorship, talent development and interesting work will attract and keep the best candidates.
automation, ai and blockchain are all encroaching on what accountants do. these technologies are great at repetitive tasks like matching numbers or importing numbers from one place to another. adding good data analytics can help you find the transactions or trends that are outliers or don’t fit with industrywide kpis. however, these technologies can’t decide whether the transactions make sense given the client’s business, the industry and the environment.
a culture of relevance lets you understand technology outputs in the context of what’s happening in your client’s business. when you take the time to think about what these tech tools are revealing, you’ll be positioned to provide your clients with the assurance and advisory services they need. the thinking piece is important, but if you don’t understand what you’re looking at because you don’t know what’s relevant for this client, you may sell them advisory services they don’t need.
lots of firms push advisory-type services on their clients without considering whether that’s really appropriate for that client. you’ve got to understand what keeps them up at night. but we can’t deliver relevance unless we take the time to understand our clients and unless we have the conversations to find out what matters to them.
as an audit leader, you want to be your client’s head coach and help your client deploy the resources to respond to the environment around them. the best coaches intimately understand their team members and competing teams’ strengths and weaknesses. they understand how to exploit those strengths and weaknesses in the game so that they can lead their team to as many victories as possible.
as an audit leader, you can only help your clients achieve greatness when relevance is woven into everything you and your firm do. you need to understand what your clients care about, what they are trying to achieve and the risks in their industry and the current economic environment.
but understanding your clients and their industry isn’t enough. you also need to develop a strong sense of businessmindedness so that the advice you give them isn’t just what makes them happy but will also help them succeed and ensure that your firm is rewarded for your service to your clients.