Influence
Influence
Risk
+4
Jul 13, 2026
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6 min read
Beyond the Lines – Issue 45
This week’s edition is for Internal Audit Managers, Senior Managers and aspiring CAEs who can feel the job changing. The move into strategic IA leadership is not about doing less work. It is about protecting different things: judgement quality, stakeholder confidence, audit committee relevance, team capability and the future shape of the function. I’ll break down the five practical shifts from hands-on delivery to board-trusted audit leadership, including how to bring data, analytics and Human + AI thinking into the way the function evolves.
Risk
+6
Jun 29, 2026
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6 min read
Beyond the Lines – Issue 43
This week’s edition tackles one of the most common frustrations in internal audit: how to produce audit results that management actually feels, uses and acts on. Not because the report is louder, longer or more dramatic, but because the finding is translated into decision, consequence, ownership and evidence of movement. I’ll walk through a practical Management Felt-It Test you can use before issuing a significant result, plus a before-and-after example showing how to move from technically correct audit wording to something more commercially useful.
Risk
+6
Jun 15, 2026
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13 min read
Beyond the Lines – Issue 41
This week’s issue is a strategic update on the next chapter for Beyond the Lines. I’m sharing where BtL is heading, why it is moving beyond content, and how the new website, Board-Trusted CAE Scorecard, Board-Trusted CAE Toolkit and future Accelerator will fit together. I’ll also cover why Internal Audit Transformation should be measured by movement, not activity and share my practical 6 step movement check to test whether your audit work is actually creating movement, or whether it is just being documented, accepted and tracked.
Risk
+5
Jun 8, 2026
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7 min read
Beyond the Lines – Issue 40
This week’s issue looks at the handoff problem in internal audit. Good work rarely fails at the point of testing. It often loses force after the evidence has been gathered: when the message is translated, the decision is unclear, ownership becomes vague, follow-through turns administrative, or behaviour does not actually change. We’ll look at where those handoffs break down, how this connects to culture in action, and why the Board-Trusted CAE Toolkit is being built around a practical question: how do you take sound audit work and make it land with more decision clarity, ownership and movement?
Risk
+4
Jun 1, 2026
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8 min read
Beyond the Lines – Issue 39
This week’s Beyond the Lines briefing builds on my Leadership Signals conversation with Rania Bejjani on influence without authority, but it is not a webinar recap. It looks at why good internal audit work can still fail to land, and how audit leaders can make findings more decision-ready by clarifying context, consequence, trade-offs, ownership, resistance and the decision required. The issue includes a practical Audit Influence Filter and a “Do this Monday” exercise to help turn one stuck issue into a sharper conversation with management.
Risk
+6
May 18, 2026
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8 min read
Beyond the Lines – Issue 37
Edition #37 looks at a constraint internal audit does not always talk about directly: management attention. In a business already crowded with reports, controls, evidence requests, meetings, AI outputs and assurance activity, audit needs to be sharper about the attention it asks for and clearer about what leaders get back from it. We explore how AI, future-ready audit skills, control design and the Three Lines all need to help management focus on what matters, make better decisions and act with confidence.
Risk
+4
May 11, 2026
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8 min read
Beyond the Lines – Issue 36
May is Internal Audit Awareness Month, and the purpose of this is not just explain what internal audit does, but to advocate for the profession. My way of doing this is to show how internal audit turns insight into decisions, ownership and outcomes. This week’s edition includes the Audit Influence Chain, Strategic Audit Test, AI Confidence Review Playbook and the CAE to CAIO capability map. Welcome to edition #36.
Risk
+4
Apr 13, 2026
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12 min read
Beyond the Lines – Issue 32
This edition looks at one of the harder truths in audit and risk leadership: being capable is not always the same as being trusted. Some leaders are invited in because their judgement improves the room. Others are listened to politely, but do not materially shape decisions. I break down what creates that gap in practice, what boards are quietly testing for, and how stronger trust is often built long before the meeting starts. It is a practical read for leaders who want their work to land with more credibility, more influence and more consequence. Welcome to Edition #32.
Risk
+4
Mar 9, 2026
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11 min read
Beyond the Lines – Issue 27
Welcome to Edition #27. This week is a practical playbook for turning audit, risk and controls evidence into action that actually sticks. You’ll get a simple way to shape any finding, data point or control issue into a message senior leaders can absorb fast, plus a handful of reusable templates and real world rewrites you can copy straight into board papers, ExCo updates and follow ups. If you’ve ever watched a valid point get “noted” and then quietly die in an action log, this edition is built to change that.
Risk
+3
Mar 2, 2026
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8 min read
Beyond the Lines – Issue 26
Welcome to Edition #26 of Beyond the Lines. This edition is about the skill most audit, risk and controls professionals were never trained for: getting decisions made without authority. AI is accelerating output, but outcomes are still decided by humans in meetings. The people who create impact are the ones who can route a decision to the right person, frame the trade-offs cleanly, and close calmly without turning it into politics.