Making a drama out of an accounting crisis!

I am very pleased to welcome a guest blog post today from Irina Predescu. Irina graduated from London School of Economics last year and has since immersed herself in the world of business risk, financial control, finance processes and compliance. She is too young to remember the events described below first time around . . . . .

Making a drama out of a (accounting) crisis!

This December saw the anniversary of the Enron scandal. 11 years after the company’s collapse was a key catalyst for the SOX legislation, some might think Enron is a thing of the past. Recently however, it struck me to see how this topic still resonates with today’s wider audience, not so much via the Wall Street Journal or Fortune articles, but through the means of entertainment.  

Quantum Finance - are Performance Indicators what they seem?

There is a popular assertion made by theoretical physicists that in the minutiae of the quantum world, the process of observing an object actually changes it. This is one of those concepts that makes my head hurt and is likely to cause a nosebleed if I think about it too hard.

I have long been a believer in those business school mantras of ‘you can’t manage what your don’t measure’ and ‘you don’t get what you expect, you get what you inspect’. It does make you wonder if some of these B-School professors would be better plying their trade as literature buffs or poets though; such is the elegance of these phrases.

Recently, however, I have become somewhat unsure of myself and I am no longer as convinced as I once was. Or perhaps, I am reaching another transcendental stage of understanding (unlikely!). Perhaps what we measure in business changes as we observe it also?

Insights from ISACA's EuroCACS ISRM Conference

Munich is always a popular place as October approaches, but I missed the wonders of the 'biergartens' in full flourish. Last week I joined a large gathering of IS Audit, Risk and Controls specialists at ISACA’s annual EuroCACS and ISRM conference at the Hilton by the Englischer Garten in the city.

Six Strings to GRC Success . . .

I am just about to go into 'silent running' mode as I depart to build another guitar on the wonderful Balearic/Piteuse island of Formentera . . . So you won't hear much from me for a few weeks unless you follow my 'Guitarra - Part Deux' blog.

BUT, thinking of my impending trip did provide some inspiration for a little treatise on performance, risk and compliance from the perspective of a guitar maker of average skill. Since most business processes are performed by people with average levels of skill and experience, I thought this might be an interesting parallel, and, as I thought about it more, it stimulated some interesting thoughts. Well, at least, they interested me!

Risk Awareness & The Bear

Take a look at the awareness test here, before you read the rest of this post.

Have you looked at this?

OK . . .  you get the point . . .

This is an interesting phenomenon . . . .

STOP! The Controls Madness . . . Part deux!

In Part 1 of this post I talked about the fact that the relationship between better risk management and more control is not intuitive or even direct. We discussed the shortcomings of the traffic light system as a control. We also touched on the issues in financial control with the false sense of security created by automated controls, such as those for purchase limits for example. You can read Part I here . . .

The same challenge exists for the classic accounting control,

STOP! The Controls Madness . . . Part I

I saw this headline recently and it got me thinking . . . .

Many organisations have been encouraged, and in some cases required, to focus their financial risk efforts on controls, developing an internal control system, regularly assessing the efficacy of controls and reporting against that for audit and compliance purposes.

Any good internal control system is risk based, but the excesses

The 'Great Potato Fraud of 2012'

I wrote a few weeks ago of the pride and complacency of the middle management fraudster and the 'smartest guys in the room'

On a recent ski trip I had met a guy on a chairlift

Are we all better than average at risk management?

Who's fooling who?

CFO magazine recently published a fascinating article that is another example where executives all think their organizations are above average. The article observes that experts estimate that internal fraud costs companies 3% to 5%

Perception, Risk and Safeguards

I gave a talk today at the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Symposium in Washington D.C. We divided the time 60/40 between my presentation and a group discussion on implications, especially for the Insurance industry. We had a lively discussion with CROs and risk professionals

Fraud, 'Smart Guys' and 'Better Than Average'

I was skiing the weekend before last in the Swiss Alps and as luck would have it, a rather interesting conversation developed on a chair lift. A pretty long lift as it happened . . .

The only other person on the chair was a guy who introduced himself

Accounting Regulation Reducing Fraud, Really?

An article in CFO magazine today announced the opinion that the US 'Jumpstart Our Business Startups' (JOBS) Act, whilst easing the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX, Sarbox) standards, might pave the way for fraud. You can read

Will it make the boat go faster?

I had a interesting chat with a friend the other day, where he recounted this quote from a world record beating sailor (I forget the name, but it is not critical to the story).

Risk, misplaced confidence, early warning systems and health checks

I am sitting in a 6^th floor office in Manhattan and ruminating between meetings. Over the past couple of years