As many compliance officers know, being a compliance department of one, even with some administrative support, is difficult enough. What if you’re an organization’s first-ever compliance officer? How do you go about building a program from scratch? The initial and most important step is ensuring that the program is correctly positioned, says Donna Boehme, principal […]
Internal Controls
Posted inInternal Controls
Rethinking Supply Chain Risk Management Strategies
March 11 marks the one-year anniversary of the Japan earthquake and tsunami—foremost a terrible loss of human life, and also a painful demonstration of supply chain risks in a globalized world. One year after those events, risk-management efforts are still trying to catch up. Many businesses probably aren’t as prepared for supply chain disruptions as […]
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
COSO Framework Update Strives for Incremental Change
The framework that Corporate America has relied on to hone its internal controls and demonstrate compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for nearly 10 years is finally getting an update. The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations (COSO) last month issued a draft update to the Internal Control—Integrated Framework document that it first developed in 1992. The framework […]
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
IFAC Offers Alerts on Tough Audit Issues
Guidance emerging from the International Federation of Accountants might prove useful even in the United States in the coming weeks as companies close the books on 2011 and plan for the year ahead. IFAC’s International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board has issued a practice note on special considerations that should be taken into account when […]
Posted inInternal Controls
COSO Unveils Proposed Update on Internal Controls Framework
Just in time for the holiday reading list, COSO has published a draft of its updated internal control framework, calling on companies that rely on the widely accepted framework to consider how the revised version might work in practice and provide feedback. The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission updated the nearly 20-year-old […]
Posted inInternal Controls
SEC Settlement Gives Insight on Internal Control Requirements
Companies searching for examples of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s latest thinking on good internal controls can learn a thing or two from the growing pains of stock exchange operator Direct Edge. The company was forced to settle with the SEC after a series of lax controls caused millions of dollars in trading losses. Financial […]
Posted inEthics & Culture
The Reasonable Person: Internal Audit’s Role in Internal Investigations
Corporate scandals and misconduct in the workplace will always be around. No strategy or set of controls can ever completely shield a company to the risk of fraudulent behavior. But a lesson that often needs repeating and relearning is that how you conduct the internal investigation can be as critical as the effect of the […]
Posted inBoards & Shareholders
Boards Continue to Struggle With Oversight of Risk Management
Three years have passed since the financial crisis of 2008 put risk management at the top of just about every corporate board’s agenda, and still it continues to confound many directors. In fact, a new survey finds that many board members admit they don’t spend enough time on risk, and many companies still don’t have […]
Posted inInternal Controls
House Considers More 404(b) Audit Exemptions
In a Republican-led move to make some business-friendly repeals to provisions of Dodd Frank and now Sarbanes-Oxley, the House Financial Services Committee is considering a bill to exempt more public companies from the required audit of internal controls over financial reporting. Rep. Stephen Fincher introduced the Small Company Job Growth and Regulatory Relief Act to […]
Posted inEthics & Culture
Proper Execution of an Employee Survey
Employee surveys are one of the most effective ways to measure corporate culture. By providing quantifiable data on workforce attitudes, surveys give companies the ability to benchmark against their own results, industry peers, and national averages to identify organizational strengths and weaknesses. Surveys are more than a “nice-to-do,” says Sara Weiner, consulting director for Kenexa, […]
