Deloitte Study Suggests Audit Role in Anti-Corruption

For readers of this blog, I like to highlight new data that describes trends in the audit and consulting profession.

Well, yesterday Deloitte published a new study of 329 executives from around the world on the subject of corruption.

It is entitled, "Fortifying Anti-Corruption in Today’s Corporation."

Now, the common headline on this story (the one getting all the airplay) is that only 4 in 10 of the surveyed executives are likely to make a public disclosure, preferring instead to either investigate themselves or wait and see.

While I find that interesting, I thought another couple of statistics deserved some highlighting.

According to the study,

When asked to select up to three sources that would likely lead to changes in the respondents’ organizations, advice from internal auditors was identified by 57 percent of respondents as most likely to lead to changes in an anti-corruption program, while compliance and internal audits were selected by 80 percent of respondents as one of the best ways to measure a program’s effectiveness. In addition, 47 percent of those surveyed said that integrating an anti-corruption program into their internal audit system would make detection and prevention of corruption easier, with an additional 33 percent indicating that it is already integrated.

In recent months, as evidenced by the recession, the Satyam failures (see my post Tis the Season), the Maddoff fraud, and other high profile controls failures the need for robust, well funded, and independent internal audit functions in organizations (both public and private) cannot be more clear.

This new information from Deloitte just continues to confirm it.

-- Prescott Coleman, CIA, CISA