Message from the CEO – What Public Interest Means for the Profession

SOPAC 2024 International Delegates

I was excited to attend my first SOPAC® over the last three days and meet so many of you in person. This year, we had an excellent turnout with over 600 in-person delegates (including over 150 from overseas).

With so many great speakers and exciting insights on offer, I attended as many sessions as I could, including the CAE Forum on Sunday, 3 March, where fifty-plus CAEs from across the nation delved deeply into the meaning of Public Interest and professional and ethical behaviour.

The key themes were:

  1. Moveable and immovable challenges in discharging professional duties. There are subtle structures within organisations that can hinder how you perform your role. Recognising these and understanding which ones can be changed and which ones are immovable, will be critical in determining if you can uphold high ethical standards.
  2. Offensive, not defensive, protection of professionalism. When faced with an unacceptable challenge to your ethical and professional standards you can find yourself in a career-limiting and/or personal legal bind. Heads of Internal Audit can protect themselves with a Deed of Indemnity with your employer. Chances are you’ll never need it, but if you do, it will save much heartache.
  3. Align public interest and risk appetite. A healthy approach to bringing the public interest into the organisation’s Governance, Risk and Compliance discussions is to incorporate it into the risk appetite discussion so that the governing body can consider what are the elements of public interest that they aim to serve and then consider whether the controls, risk management and governance are appropriate.
  4. Public interest vs community wants. Distinguishing between community wants and public interest is crucial, especially in contexts like healthcare services. It is important to recognise what is good to have versus what is right to do.

Unpacking the meaning of public interest and other elements of the new Global Internal Audit Standards will continue to be a focus for IIA-Australia as we head towards the January 2025 implementation deadline.

Watch this space for updates.