In 2014, IIA President and CEO Richard Chambers shared what he believed were the most important lessons from almost 40 years as an internal audit professional in the first edition of his book, Lessons Learned on the Audit Trail. More than 15,000 copies were sold worldwide and it was swiftly translated into Spanish, French, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese.
In the years since the first edition was published, Chambers has shared numerous new lessons across various content media and written more than 200 blogs and articles. The "speed of risk" has been a recurring theme in the messages he has delivered to the profession since 2014, and it is a theme that is prominent in this updated edition. He addresses topics of concern to the profession today, including:
- The rising expectations of internal audit's stakeholders
- The imperative to audit at the speed of risk
- How internal audit must leverage innovation in the face of disruption
- Internal audit's role in auditing culture, artificial intelligence, and new technologies
- The idea that internal auditors can audit anything but not everything
- The skills future trailblazers will need in internal audit
Chambers's motivation in writing this new edition is that if he can help just one internal auditor to be better prepared for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, then the effort will have been worth it.