10 Interesting books for Internal Auditors in 140 Characters or Less

1. Good Strategy / Bad Strategy

Richard P. Rumelt

Good Strategy is not a list of truisms and platitudes. It is a clear diagnosis of a situation and coherent actions that will be taken to meet it.

2. Auditing that matters

Norman Marks

Ex CAE explains how audit should not be about reports and work papers, it should focus on supporting an organisation to be successful.

3. Lean Auditing

James Paterson

Using Lean practices to transform traditional approaches to IA whilst staying aligned to IIA standards.

4. The Failure of Risk Management: Why It’s Broken and How to Fix It

Doug Hubbard

Did you think risk management was about collating and rating a list of risks from low to high? Turns out you were wrong.

5. Billion Dollar Lessons

Paul Carroll & Chunka Mui

True stories of how failure to consider downside risk in strategic decisions set billions of dollars on fire.

6. What you do is who you are

Ben Horowitz

Actions speak louder than words. Organisational culture is not a values statement or company policy, but how individuals actually behave within an organisation.

7. Bean Counters

Richard Brooks

Explains where the “Big 4” accounting firms came from and how they translated their virtual monopoly on audit into a multi-billion global consultancy empire.

8. The Management Myth

Matthew Stewart

Ex Consultant explains how much of the management consulting industry is nonsense.

9. Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder

Nassim Taleb

A challenge to audit’s focus on control and reduction uncertainty and variation. Taleb shows the desirability of systems that improve in the face of unexpected events.

10. Sooner Safer Happier: Antipatterns and Patterns for Business Agility

Jonathan Smart, Zsolt Berend, Myles Ogilvie, Simon Roher

Cuts through the “Agile” hype and to explain how an organisation can actually become agile and achieve objectives sooner, safer and happier.