Audit Leadership Event (ALE)

Audit Leadership Event (ALE)

Innovation: Internal Audit at the Helm

Embrace the world of innovation; the status quo is not sustainable. In a rapidly changing environment of rising stakeholder expectations, economic uncertainty, volatile stock markets, and rapid technological advances, organizations are challenged as never before. To stay relevant, businesses and governments, as well as their products and services, must become more flexible, adaptive and most importantly, innovative. The internal audit function is well positioned to support an innovation agenda if it can help organizations understand their current innovation practices: how they may be a hindrance to innovation and how they could be improved or enhanced to maximize innovative capabilities. But is internal audit currently providing this value? If not, why not? Likewise, is internal audit adapting to the rapidly changing environment by embracing innovation and maximizing its own capabilities to ensure its products and services remain relevant and add strategic value to the organizations it serves? IIA Canada’s 2016 Audit Leaders Event will explore innovation and the role internal audit must play to embrace and enable it. This session will inspire change and explain why organizations and internal audit must demonstrate a commitment to innovation.

Format

The event will commence with a luncheon, followed by a dynamic keynote speaker, Jerry Koh, who will address the innovation imperative. Following the keynote speaker, an expert panel of insightful and inspired leaders from the public and private sector will discuss their views on innovation, leading practices, and the role of Internal Audit. Through moderated discussion, the following are among the key questions that will be addressed:

• What are the questions senior management needs to ask to better understand their organization’s innovation capabilities?
• How do you balance the opportunity of innovation with the inherent risk of change?
• How can internal audit support innovation in organizations?
• Is internal audit maximizing its own innovation capabilities? If not, how can it?
• How can innovation transform internal audit?

The session will wrap up with a final address from Lanja Fletcher, a Principal with LHH Knightsbridge and leading expert in Team Effectiveness, who will reflect on the leadership challenges in creating and sustaining dynamic and innovative teams and organizations and discuss the leadership essentials that are needed to encourage innovation and build and sustain a culture and climate for innovation.   A networking wine and cheese will take place immediately following the final session. See Agenda on next page. ALE Agenda available here.

Agenda