I am a fan of Japanese anime (or Japanese animation) and one of the more memorable anime series that I found interesting was, “Solo Leveling“. It is based on the South Korean web novel by Chugong.
The key plot behind “Solo Leveling” is that the main character keeps “leveling-up” or in the language of those who play computer role playing games, his character keeps growing its attributes like strength, agility, endurance etc.
I enjoyed the anime series and the web-toon a lot because I am a bit of a fan of computer fantasy role playing games, but the concept of leveling up is far from being fiction, it is fact if you apply yourself with the proper guidance towards your professional goals as an auditor.
I started my career in audit. Whilst it was the statutory audit of financial statements of statutory boards, the bulk of the audits performed were actually internal controls and compliance with government regulations.
As an internal auditor, you start off mostly on testing of controls as well as checking on compliance of the auditee to certain standards. This type of work is internal audit in nature as you are providing assurance that the organization’s established controls are in place, functioning to prevent and to detect any possible risks or non-compliances with the organization’s policies and procedures.
Over time, there would be instances where either due to your audit procedures or from whistleblowing or management reviews that some anomaly or irregularity is found. This is when an audit may turn into an investigation.
How does one prepare to change our hats from being an internal (or external) auditor into an investigator?
The skillsets of being an investigator and an internal auditor overlap, but one fundamental difference is that, in investigations, you have some preliminary evidence or information to suspect that there is some wrong-doing and you have to be very focused to identify what exactly has gone wrong and to uncover the evidence to substantiate that.
What I discovered is that for effective investigations, you need some of these qualities. Some can be trained, but others I believe are innate:
- Professional skepticism
- Open mind to explore possible scenarios
- Internal personal communications and interviewing skills
- Domain skills (in the specific area of the business process or the organization’s business rules where the investigation involves)
- Ability to detect lies
The above list is not exhaustive. The first two bullet points to some extent are innate but one can learn to keep an open mind and not jump to conclusions. The rest are acquired over time from work and life experience in general. I “solo-leveled” my investigation skills from a combination of trial and error, learning what I could from books and the internet (and more recently from Language Learning Models).
Growing into becoming an investigator as an internal auditor ultimately requires one to start doing investigations to become better at honing the skills described. At times, it is a bit of chicken and egg situation, in that you would not be able to become better unless you start to perform investigations. Yet, most organization may not want their investigations driven by individuals who have not clocked the requisite experience.
My own investigation journey started mostly while I was the Head of Internal Audit in an educational institution where I learnt on-the-job by carrying out half-a-dozen investigations ranging from loss of assets, bid-rigging to alleged misconduct by staff. I acquired the skills as I went along, making use of Google and leveraging on my interviewing skills honed from performing internal audit for many years.
It was only towards the last four years that I picked up the Certified Fraud Examiner and the ISCA (Financial Forensic Professional) certifications to help formalize the investigations experience I gained from investigation work.
How do you think you can “solo-level” up your own investigation skills?
Would be great to hear from you in the comments section.
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