Last week, the institute took us to task for our summary of CFO Magazine's coverage of the IIA's international survey. We said "the magazine's independent analysis stands in stark contrast with a cheerleading press release the IIA issued about its survey findings" when CFO said staffing and future budget allocations for audit teams were stagnant.
Scott McCallum, the IIA's media relations manager, contacted us and also posted this comment to the story:
The internal audit profession is anything but "stagnant." This is a grave error on the part of this writer and the CFO.com reporter, Sarah Johnson, as both articles misinterpreted the findings of the study. Internal auditing is one of the fastest growing professions in the world today and salaries are on the rise according to the studies of several independent sources. Don't hesitate to look within the internal audit profession for jobs that are making a difference to organizations around the globe. We encourage the editorial staff of JobsintheMoney to read the report themselves (as they had not done before publishing this piece) to see that the survey results did not state nor indicate that the profession is stagnant, salaries are dormant, and internal auditors are struggling to gain respect from corporate management. This is actually all to the contrary.
In reading the original IIA study, we found a specific passage that CFO appeared to rely on in fact reflects budgets in only one area - outsourcing and re-sourcing - not for internal audit departments as a whole. So, we've rewritten the story and posted it at the top of our news.
It's a fair question to ask why we didn't read the original survey in the first place. Certainly, we'd seen the press release. It struck me that, in this age of increased regulation, auditors have been raising their profile and benefiting from an increased demand for their needs for some time, and another survey documenting that didn't seem, frankly, that interesting to financial people interested in career management and possibly changing jobs.
But a lot of people ask me how long this job market is going to last. I have no better crystal ball than anyone else, but I'm always looking for clouds on the horizon so we can point them out to our readers. When CFO, one of the mostly highly regarded magazines in the business, writes about flaws in a trade association's contentions about its sector's health, it's worth our attention. We read their report closely and decided it was worth telling our readers about.
Like most media today, we try to help users sort through the huge volume of news out there to find things that are interesting and useful. We thought CFO's points were important for JITM's readers to know, just as we've pointed out items from other publications when we think they'd be useful to people in managing their careers. The fact the report appeared in such a respected title may have made us complacent, but I'm not sure. If people want, I'm happy to expand upon why. For now, though, I'll end the post as I began it, buy saying the IIA was correct in their criticism of our story.
Higher Profile Seen For Internal Auditors [JITM]
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