Workshops

Most audit reports are technically correct. Far fewer get the right actions taken – actions that reduce risk and move the business toward its critical objectives.

This workshop closes that gap. The curriculum covers every element of a high-impact audit report – stakeholder analysis, finding structure in line with the attributes of the IIA’s Global Internal Audit Standards, root cause, risk language, executive summary, tone, and conciseness – taught for native and non-native writers of English alike.

This is a working workshop: concepts are explored through discussion and exercises, building cumulatively toward writing tasks with group and trainer feedback – and feedback on real writing is where writing actually changes.

What changes

• First drafts arrive higher quality. Reviewers spend less time wordsmithing, and the review cycle shortens – materially.
• Root cause and consequence are clearly articulated in every finding. The “so what” is never left for the reader to infer.
• Reports get more concise. What matters fits on one page – without manipulating font sizes.
• Writers leave with a repeatable method – one that keeps producing clear, defensible findings without a trainer in the room.
• Wording negotiations with audit clients decrease, because reports say what they mean – and writers can hold that line.

Format

Two days in person, or four half-day virtual sessions across one week. Short concept presentations, exercises, and writing tasks with group and trainer feedback.

Working material

The strongest results come from working on your own writing – participants are encouraged to bring anonymized findings from their own audits, and realistic practice material is provided as an alternative. For in-house deliveries, the team works on its own findings in its own confidential environment.

Want to know more? Contact me!

Fundamentals first – before bad habits and AI shortcuts set in.

An audit report is internal audit’s business card – for many stakeholders, it’s the only contact with audit they will ever have. Yet most new auditors learn testing first, documentation second, and writing on the job – if at all.

This workshop builds the foundation in the right order: what audit reports are for, who actually reads them, and what those readers need – because stakeholders drive what auditors write. From there, it moves to the audit finding, the building block of every report, and what makes a finding effective.

AI will happily draft a finding for anyone. But a writer who doesn’t yet know what a good finding looks like cannot judge what AI hands them. This workshop builds that judgment – brains first, then AI.

This is a working workshop: activities build the skill of constructing effective findings step by step, with group and trainer feedback – participants leave having written real findings, not just heard about them.

What changes:

• New auditors understand the why before the how – reports exist to change something, not to document effort.
• Stakeholder thinking starts on day one – who reads audit reports, and what each reader needs from them.
• Findings stop being intimidating – writers know the pieces, how they fit, and where to start.
• First drafts become usable drafts – reviewers inherit workable material instead of blank-page struggles.
• Confidence arrives early – before the fear of the empty page sets in.

For

New internal auditors – and anyone writing their first audit reports, whatever path brought them to audit.

Next step

Deep Dive: Findings, when they’re ready to go deeper.

Format

One day in person, or two virtual half-days.Working material: Everything is provided – no prior audits, findings, or reports needed. Participants learn what a good finding looks like from the start – not from past reports sitting in the archive.

Want to know more? Contact me!

Give your readers findings they never have to decode.

Stakeholders judge internal audit one finding at a time. A strong finding builds credibility and gets action – a weak one wastes the reader’s time, and audit pays for it in trust.

This workshop is squarely focused on writing audit findings: guidance, language, and exercises for each attribute in line with the IIA’s Global Internal Audit Standards – one red thread from the finding title to agreed actions that mitigate the identified risk and pave the way to achieving the organization’s objectives.

The bar is high and specific: findings the reader understands in one pass and answers with “got it – we’ll do it.” When findings hit that bar, the conversation with audit clients changes – less negotiating over words, more discussion of the risk and what it means to the business. And the benefit travels upward: the executive summary is distilled from the findings – stronger findings make a stronger summary.

This is a working workshop: concepts are explored through discussion and exercises, with writing practice and live critique from the group and the trainer in every round – ensuring participants leave writing stronger findings, starting with the very next finding they draft.

What changes:

• Findings are complete and coherent – nothing missing, nothing padded, every element pulling in the same direction.
• Risks resonate – readers feel them and see what they mean for the business.
• Readers finish each finding knowing exactly what happens next – and why it’s worth doing.
• Writing gets faster – writers know what goes where and why, so the circling stops.
• Review rounds decrease – findings arrive closer to final, and the wording holds when audit clients push back.

Format

One day in person, or two virtual half-days.

Working material

The strongest results come from working on your own writing – participants are encouraged to bring anonymized findings from their own audits, and realistic practice material is provided as an alternative. For in-house deliveries, the team works on its own findings in its own confidential environment.

Want to know more? Contact me!

Connect the dots – don’t hand your board a puzzle.

For your most senior stakeholders, the executive summary is the audit report – it’s all they read. Too many executive summaries are still a list of findings, and a list is not a message.

This workshop is dedicated entirely to the executive summary: what belongs there, what doesn’t, and how to write an audit conclusion that delivers a message – insight the reader can act on, not a recap of the fieldwork results. Guidance, language, and exercises from the audit conclusion through the key issues, including tone, balance, and formality for the most senior readers in the organization.

The bar: a senior reader – audit committee member, board member, C-suite – understands the message in one pass, unaided. What happened, why it matters, and what happens next, without ever flipping back to the detail. That’s when the executive summary starts doing its job.

This is a working workshop: concepts are explored through discussion and exercises, with writing practice and live critique from the group and the trainer, ensuring participants leave able to turn any set of findings into one clear message.

What changes

• Executive summaries deliver a conclusion – one clear message, not a findings recap.
• Insight replaces repetition – readers get the what, the why, the so what, and the now what.
• Senior readers act after one reading – no clarifying emails, no “what does this mean for us?”
• Writing the executive summary gets faster – the hardest page in the report stops being written last, worst, and under the most pressure.
• Conversations at the top change – less explaining the report, more discussing the risks in it.

For

Auditors-in-charge and above – whoever writes, assembles, or owns the executive summary.

Recommended prerequisite (not required)

Deep Dive: Findings. The executive summary is distilled from the findings – if the findings are weak, no summary can save them.

Format

One day in person, or two virtual half-days.

Working material

The strongest results come from working on your own writing – participants ideally bring an anonymized report from their own audits to work with; realistic practice material is provided as an alternative. For in-house deliveries, the team works on its own reports in its own confidential environment.

Want to know more? Contact me!

Coach the writer, not the draft.

The endless review loop is not a writing problem – it’s a reviewing problem. Reviewers who rewrite teach their writers exactly one lesson: someone else will fix it.

Responsibility for reviewing audit reports arrives with seniority – the skill is assumed, and almost nobody trains it. This masterclass does: it treats reviewing as a craft of its own, coaching writing instead of redoing it, with a quality bar that holds even when deadlines don’t.

The multiplier in this room is one no writing course can match: train a writer, and one person’s reports improve – train a reviewer, and every report they touch improves. The review layer is also where writing training lives or dies. When reviewers reinforce the standard, training sticks. When reviewers quietly rewrite, it unravels – one corrected draft at a time.

This is a working masterclass: real drafts, real review situations, and practice giving feedback that changes the next draft – not just this one.

What changes

• Rewriting stops – reviewers coach the writer instead of redoing the work.
• Feedback becomes usable – writers learn what to change and why, not just that the boss changed it.
• The same mistakes stop arriving twice – or twenty times – because each review develops the writer, and drafts improve audit by audit.
• Ownership stays with the writer – reviewed and supported, never taken over.
• The bottleneck clears – review time decreases, and leaders spend it on the message, not the commas.

For

Audit managers and above – anyone who reviews other people’s audit writing.

Prerequisite

Both Deep Dives – Findings and Executive Summary – or the Complete Workshop. This room starts where those courses end: everyone arrives speaking the same language, so the masterclass goes straight to the reviewer’s craft.

Format

One day in person, or two virtual half-days.

Working material

Participants ideally bring anonymized material from their own review practice – a draft, and the feedback it received. Practice material is provided as an alternative. For in-house deliveries, the team works on its own reports in its own confidential environment.

Want to know more? Contact me!