AccelPro | Audit

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development.  Today we’re featuring a conversation with Jim Pelletier, Senior Product manager at Wolters Kluwer. Pelletier talks us through gathering effective data for ESG reporting, why it's important for auditors to develop relationships with other operational leaders, and how they can develop mature processes and controls around data collection and reporting.He stresses the need for transparency in audit. “And the way we get there is by having reporting standards in place, so it's understood what an organization is required to report. What metrics need to be in place? What is the type of data that the public needs to be able to see and the investors need to be able to understand? Those standards need to be in place.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development.  Today we’re featuring a conversation with Danielle Brannock, Manager of Data Analytics at Intuitive Surgical. Brannock talks about the huge increase in efficiency which automation has brought to data analytics, liberating many professionals from rote tasks and allowing them to put their minds to creative problem-solving. Brannock says, “What automation allows us to do is focus on strategic value adding work. It's going to free up your auditors to start looking at the outputs, making judgment calls, and then providing value to the business in a different way.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with Mike Callino, Senior Director of Internal Audit at Braze. We discuss the benefits of introducing new technologies into the audit process. Callino explains how implementing new methodologies, such as Agile, can increase successful collaboration across teams, as well as overall efficiency. He also foresees the increased use of AI in the auditing process, and claims it is already making data analysis more accurate and efficient. “AI can streamline our audit tests, our audit fieldwork, and the like. And this is all within a controlled environment that we have within our GRC software. It's going to allow us to help write controls better, help process flow out better, write reports in a more timely manner, and help analyze big data sets.”---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with Chanpreet Singh, Director of Internal Audit & SOX at Ouster.An accomplished risk and control leader, Singh provides valuable insight on how artificial intelligence and automation is improving the audit space, as well as what auditors need to know to keep up with these technological changes. Staying up to date on new resources, honing the skills needed to use those resources, and adapting to a ‘what if’ mindset can go a long way towards making technology work for you. As an example, Singh says, “If you think about the revenue cycle, every deal is going to have a sales order. Now, if all of that is digital, you can set up an analytics tool, which can throw exceptions. If an order doesn't meet, for example, a customer purchase order, you can catch it even before you fulfill it.”---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with Howard Scheck.A dual CPA/JD, Scheck is both an accountant and a lawyer, which has led to a fascinating career. Currently, Scheck is a partner with the StoneTurn Group where he helps firms with financial reporting related issues and investigations. Previously, Scheck was on the regulatory side of things, first working as a lawyer in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement for many years, before serving as Chief Accountant in the same division. In this episode, we discuss trends in SEC enforcement actions that auditors should be aware of (including an increased focus on non-GAAP issues like cybersecurity and controls), landmark cases and penalties handed out in 2023, Scheck’s estimation of the incidence of fraud, and how auditors can best stay up to day on the SEC’s evolving agenda. We also dig into Scheck’s unique career path and what advice he has for others considering combining law and accounting.---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with Veena Brown, Associate Professor of Accounting and program director at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. We discuss the need to address unconscious bias in the audit and accounting industries, as well as support and encourage students as they navigate their way towards these careers. Brown, a first-generation immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago and the first of her family to receive a bachelor’s degree, emphasizes that the biggest barrier to entry for those wishing to join the industry is lack of support and training. She posits that revamping the curriculum to include a contribution, additive, transformative, and social action approach to inclusion will allow students to see the industry as more accessible and relevant.---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation about professional skepticism and fraud. Our guest is Joe Brazel, Distinguished Professor of Accounting and North Carolina State University. Given auditors are paid by the very companies they’re supposed to be checking up on, complicated incentives are baked into the very structure of the profession. No one has yet discovered a better structure for the industry, so auditors must negotiate tricky tradeoffs from the start. How do you keep clients happy while maintaining an appropriate level of professional skepticism? When is an inconsistency or concern serious enough to warrant further investigation? And can new AI tools play a role in helping to unravel some of these knotty problems? These are the questions at the heart of my conversation with Brazel, who runs through what his research reveals about how audit leaders and audit committees can best encourage healthy skepticism, the promise and perils of new digital tools and the advice he always gives his students about charting their careers.---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with Tim Coville, associate professor of accounting at St. John’s University. ESG is an undoubtedly hot (if controversial) topic in the business world as companies and regulators wrestle with what businesses should disclose about their environmental and social impact, and exactly how. But despite all this noise and attention on the topic, CPA firms in North America currently handle a relatively small slice of ESG reporting and assurance work — just 15% according to Coville’s research. The rest goes to engineering firms and other consultants. In this interview, Coville discusses why public accountants don’t win more business related to ESG reporting, how the evolving regulatory landscape might change the situation and what auditors should be doing now to prepare to handle more of this sort of work in the future. Putting on his educator’s hat, Coville also reveals what advice he gives students on finding a fulfilling path in the world of audit and how working in the ESG space has helped him find meaning in his career.---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with Mark Beasley, Professor of Enterprise Risk Management and the Director of the Enterprise Risk Management Initiative at the Poole College of Management. Beasley is an innovative thought leader in the area of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) and its integration with strategy and corporate governance. The ERM framework grew out of previous approaches to risk assessment that viewed risks in silos. ERM, says Dr. Beasely is trying to “close the gaps that exist between the silos.” Today, we talk about the basics of ERM, and how external auditors may benefit from better understanding their client's approach to risk management.“A lot of times, the C-suite, the way they think about more external risk is what I would call ad hoc risk management in the sense of, oh, I thought about this when I was running this morning, I was taking a shower, oh, I saw that on the Wall Street Journal front page. It's very unstructured. ERM is going to take you through a process to force explicit conversation and discussions in a structured way about what kinds of risks could emerge that can affect our strategy.”---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with Matt Johnson, U. S. National Technology Assurance Leader at KPMG. Thanks to artificial intelligence, blockchain and the rise of remote work and advanced analytics, the technology companies use to get work done and serve customers is evolving at an incredible pace. How are tech specialists in the audit field keeping up? Over a 20+ career at KPMG, Matt Johnson has been helping both clients and internal teams adapt to tech innovation and avoid technology-related risks. He talked to AccelPro Audit about how digital transformation is changing tech assurance, executives’ increasing concern about cybersecurity risks and the SEC’s new rules around reporting them, KPMG’s creative efforts to fill the talent pipeline, as well as his own personal career journey. While Johnson offers plenty of insight about the current tech landscape and developing your own career, perhaps his most passionate piece of advice is more strategic — focusing on how auditors can find the long-term motivation to keep learning in such a fast-changing field.---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with Laura Mitchell, Principal at Jackson Lewis. When it comes to reporting around ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance), the ‘E’ often gets most of the attention as companies wrestle with new rules and guidelines around carbon emissions and other environmental impacts. But the landscape around the ‘S’ — which stands for social — is changing just as rapidly as employees, other stakeholders and even activists from both sides of the political spectrum start to take a greater interest in firms’ performance in areas like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and pay equity. Mitchell, an attorney who runs the Affirmative Action Practice Group at Jackson Stone, is an expert in the challenges companies are facing around reporting the ‘S’ in ESG. She talked to AccelPro Audit about the fast-changing landscape around reporting diversity data, legal risks firms face, the importance of being data driven, auditors’ role in collecting that data and how everyone in the space is confused (but talking to peers helps).---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with Dennis McGowan, Vice President, Professional Practice at the Center for Audit Quality. On this podcast previously we’ve had a pair of guests — former PCAOB board member Jay Brown and academic Luigi Zingales —  come out strongly in favor of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s proposed changes strengthening auditors’ responsibilities for detecting fraud, known as noncompliance with laws and regulations (NOCLAR.) But many in the industry, including the Big Four accounting firms, have serious objections. In this interview McGowan, of external auditor industry group The Center for Audit Quality lays out his concerns and the approach he would prefer the PCAOB to take. This episode also digs into the CAQ’s Anti-Fraud Collaboration and its research findings, the prospect of using AI to better detect fraud, McGowan’s own experience of going through the PCAOB inspection process and how audit firms can continue to be as welcoming as possible to LGBTQ+ professionals.---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with Chris Chung, SVP Business Assessment and Chief Audit Executive at The Doctors Company, the nation's largest physician owned medical malpractice insurer.  Chung, who previously worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers and focused on enhancing governance, risk and compliance activities, has a comprehensive idea of risk assessment. Having worked across sectors, Chung recognizes that risk can’t be boiled down to a single number. Auditors, he says, benefit from implementing a strategic approach to risk management that weighs impact, likelihood and other factors in a systematic way. That, he says, can help business leaders recognize why “risk and opportunity are two sides of the same coin.”---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with Luigi Zingales, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. For auditors to properly gauge how much effort they should devote to searching out fraud, it would be helpful to know exactly how common corporate fraud is. In a recent paper Italian academic Luigi Zingales and his collaborators came up with a clever methodology to answer exactly this question. In this interview, Zingales talks about the eye-popping results they achieved, and what the numbers suggest about the proper role of auditors. He also discusses his stint setting up a research center for the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and what the experience revealed about “distorted” audition regulation. Zingales believes reform is needed to make the current SEC whistleblower program for corporate fraud more effective.---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with Jeanna Doherty, ESG Enablement Leader at EY Americas.In her role at EY, Doherty helps the firm’s clients and client teams understand and prepare to comply with the fast-changing regulations around ESG reporting, both in the US and abroad. In this conversation she shares the biggest challenges she sees companies struggling with today, as well as her best advice on how auditors can help clients overcome them.  In the course of the conversation she offers a detailed breakdown of California’s recently passed emission disclosure requirements, her vision of ‘the auditor of the future’ and a thoughtful breakdown of how auditors should think through the process of getting clients from zero ESG reporting to meeting markets’ and regulators’ increasingly stringent demands for non-financial information.---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with Jay Brown, Lawrence W. Treece Professor of Corporate Governance at University of Denver and former Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) board member. When the PCAOB released its priorities for inspections in 2023, fraud topped the list. Why is the audit field’s regulatory body focusing more on fraud now? What does that mean for practitioners in the trenches? And what steps can responsible auditors take to ensure they're following best practices when it comes to fraud detection? To answer these questions we went straight to the source: Jay Brown is a former PCAOB board member who left the organization in 2021 to return to his former work as a professor of corporate governance. He spoke to AccelPro Audit about the chasm between investors’ and auditors’ expectations regarding fraud detection, his view of the current PCAOB leadership, nuts and bolts advice for practicing auditors and what steps to take if you’re interested in getting involved in regulation and policy in your career.---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with David Gelles, reporter on the New York Times climate team and leader of The Times’s Climate Forward newsletter and events series.Here on AccelPro Audit we usually talk to auditors, regulators, academics and regulators. But today we’re talking to a journalist at one of the world’s most respected newspapers. Why? With years of business reporting under his belt and a recent promotion to the head of up the Times’ Climate Forward newsletter, Gelles has a unique perch from which to view and understand the greater cultural context companies face when they’re doing ESG reporting. In this conversation, he talks about the increasingly perilous political crosswinds companies must navigate, the rising risk of legal liability around environmental issues, why he still finds most companies’ ESG reporting lacking and finally, why he keeps a framed rejection letter from the New York Times on his desk.---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with Guylaine Saint Juste, the CEO of the National Association of Black Accountants. Saint Juste is former banking executive at Capital One, where she oversaw small business strategy and led various aspects of business banking, including talent acquisition, performance management, marketing and sales. She was also the former Executive of Year Up, a non-profit organization that helps develop talent and provide opportunities for promising young adults. “There's plenty of talent in this country. But we're not engaging with it,” Saint Juste explains. “When firms told me that because of macroeconomic pressure, that they wouldn't spend the $30, $40, $50 thousand dollars that we asked them to pay to have access to this pipeline, and therefore didn't show up, that, for me, continues to permeate this conversation that we have about talent.”---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation about digital transformation in the accounting and audit space. Our guest is Ben Richmond, Country Manager, United States at Xero, one of the leading providers of cloud-based accounting software. The work of auditors and accountants used to be mostly done with a whole lot of Excel. Now thousands of apps and platforms are emerging promising to move that work to the cloud and automate much of it. What opportunities does that present for auditors? What challenges and pitfalls? Does that mean every auditor needs to be a tech whiz now? And what about all the hype around AI and machine learning? Richmond offers a step-by-step pathway from where firms are now, to a fully digital future and talks about how new tech tools can open us new revenue-generating opportunities, ease staff shortages and improve relationships with clients. Realizing these benefits, he cautions, requires openness to innovation, attention to security concerns and a renewed focus on empathy and soft skills, in addition to tech competence.---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com

Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. This interview is part of our AccelPro Career Tools series, where we focus on the trends, topics and advice most useful to managing your career. Our host is internationally recognized journalist, author and NPR host Celeste Headlee. Today we’re featuring a conversation with Tushar Kumar, Financial Advisor at Twin Peaks Wealth Advisors. We discuss the challenge of surviving and thriving in the financial advising industry and how that applies to other client-oriented roles, including audit. Tushar offers strategies for gaining and preserving long-lasting client relationships, whether the market is up or down. We also speak about how a supportive, step-based approach to employee training can help your team successfully connect with clients and maintain their own well-being.Bottom line: in addition to a deep understanding of the industry, it’s soft skills, and particularly good communication, that will bring you business and make you irreplaceable.---AccelPro’s interviews and products accelerate your professional development. Our mission is to improve your day-to-day job performance and make your career goals achievable.Send your comments and career questions to questions@joinaccelpro.com. You can also call us at 614-642-2235.If your colleagues in any sector of the audit field might be interested, please let them know about AccelPro. As our community grows, it grows more useful for its members This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit auditinsights.joinaccelpro.com