Time that tames us to follow through. It runs its course, until it doesn’t. In our quest of predictability, we just fall along with it. We prefer a smooth sail and we’re in luck if we get one. But still, we are not sure of what time has in store for us. It’s just that we hope, expect and desire it to be all good, rather best! And we take a leap of faith.
It usually starts with us trying our luck. Whether a comprehensive thought process is behind it or just some sort of imagination, what it turns out to be is neither fully planned nor imagined. And what to talk about controls in such a scenario? It’s time that controls us and spends us rather us controlling or spending it, even if we believe otherwise.
When it comes to our careers, we try our best to take charge and be in control. We make choices influenced by our perceptions and preferences, or someone makes our choices for us. But we can only guess what the consequences of those choices would be. And we have to deal with them. Again, if most of these consequences are those that were intended (positive and negative), we feel self-assured.
If there are unintended consequences of our choices, which can never actually be fully eliminated, we’ve to manage these to the best of our ability and capabilities, exploiting these (when positive) and fighting these (when not!), but we stay put till it’s time to move on.
And moving on is certain. Life is not meant to be at a standstill, it moves on, time moves on, so how could we not move on?
When I started off after having completed my accounting studies, it was a small sized professional services firm, where I first landed. I worked there for a few months before I got an opportunity to move to a medium sized professional services firm, where I spent another few months, before I got lucky and got into E&Y, my alma mater and one of the Big4, where I always wanted to be.
At the time it was just about my aspirations, I never knew what it was really about being part of the Big4. But I got the understanding of what it was pretty early, when I, in my efforts to move abroad to the Middle East, got to hear comments about my time with the Big4 from an interviewer who had selected me for an accounting position at a multinational. The comments were loud and clear; the time I had spent with Big4 was invaluable but far too less to be meaningful.
I came back not with a heavy heart but fully energized to take back the reins of what was already with me, the audit staff position and never looked back. Became semi senior and then senior in shortest possible times and started conducting audit engagements as the senior in charge.
What continued for the next 3.3 years was a full package that schooled me, groomed me, trained me or more aptly made me! It changed almost everything I knew and I had learnt. I started understanding how theory relates with practice and what it takes to be an auditor in flesh and blood! When I started off, I didn’t know it would come to this transformation.
Towards, the end of my time with E&Y, I was seconded to one of its Middle Eastern practices for a 3-month period. This was the icing on the cake. I was able to pull off a total of 5 external audit engagements (4 independently and almost single handedly). This was what E&Y had done to me! I would remain forever indebted to my time and my mentors there.
When I was completing my secondment, an opportunity in Internal Auditing was referred to me back in my home city at a global consumer electronics brand, Haier. I applied in earnest because I had worked for this entity as part of my time with E&Y and because I did not have anything else after completing my secondment.
I was in sheer luck here too, that I landed my first paid employment right after my training period and that too as Manager Internal Audit. At the time I only had a couple of engagements to my credit in internal auditing as part of my training at E&Y and their conduct and thus my acquaintance with Internal Auditing was mostly tilted towards an External Auditing approach.
But to my surprise, the open field I enjoyed here with the ability to do anything I wanted and innovate freely, enabled me to check out the pure internal auditing approach and I was able to develop the first ever internal audit charter and manual for the Company. From there on, I had decided that Internal Auditing is going to be my choice of career.
I earned my CIA credential and then my CISA credential while working there. That’s what this experience did to me; I was now not just clear about my career choices, but also confident that it was where I belonged. Several annual audit cum business plans later, more than a dozen fraud risk factors based engagements later, a huge quantum of risk assessment exercises later and many new methodologies later, which were all firsts by the way, I decided to switch to a newer, untapped and a massively bigger canvas.
This was a listed company, a power producer which at the time was the largest one the Country had. This was KAPCO. And I was appointed as its maiden Head of Internal Audit. I remember vividly that on my second day at office; I was able to draft out its key risk areas from a cursory study of the core business agreements. The core risk areas were concurred with by the management, and I set out to establish the Company’s first and very own Internal Audit Charter.
It was the start of something bigger, so exciting and interesting, which I had never thought initially. In fact, I had been finding it hard to come to terms with the relocation to a different city having never left my home city all my career. But in one year exactly, it all changed. KAPCO had taken me in for the ride of my career.
The Chief Executive, my administrative head, became my mentor and the confidence and trust he reposed in my abilities throughout enabled me to go from one initiative to another first, from one great to another great, from one milestone to another success story. There was no looking back. There was no time to look back as well.
The IA Charter, the new process-oriented audit methodologies with new rating criteria and swelling IA findings, the repositories of findings, the data analytics based IA planning, the triggers leading to improvements in policies and procedures, the focused IA engagements, were just the tip of the iceberg.
I was additionally assigned the reins of the Quality Management System (QMS) and due to it the driving seat of Integrated Management System (IMS) in the Company, by the approval of the Audit Committee of the Board to which I reported functionally, after I had shown interest in taking on the exciting opportunities that came with it.
A comprehensive review and revamp of hundreds of policies and procedures, transition to ISO 45001 from OHSAS 18001, introduction of process approach to Internal Audits of IMS, revamp of repositories of findings and continual improvement actions, development of minimal compliance checklists based audit programs for ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001, ideation, creation and implementation of first ever entity-wide framework for performance management and finally the complete integration of individual performance targets were the most noticeable accomplishments at the QMS desk.
And then the assurance heavy Internal Audit plan at a time when the control environment was facing numerous challenges, most notably erosion. This plan triggered and approved by the Audit Committee yielded several substantial discoveries in an otherwise widely thought, believed evolved, and matured internal control systems.
I look back on these years, and it all seems to be a pipe dream. The lesson was plain and simple. The ammo that we are supposed to be armed with is competence, eagerness to work hard, commitment, dedication and sincerity. Luck eventually finds us and in its own time offers us a field to play with a no holds barred approach.
Meticulous auditors are laden with additional ammo as well. The type that doesn’t sit well with many, especially those in managements. Call it our escape plan but it is essentially what we owe our clients, the entities investing in IA, because it comprises of all the ways and manners in which they were wronged.
I’m least bothered about the management’s perception of my work and my approach. Calling us adversary or advisor is their choice. I’ve always continued to advise with only one perspective in heart and mind, doing right by myself, my profession and my employer. So, what we do with the escape plan is our own choice, especially when the time is on our side. I made my choice too and paid what I was owed!
It is said that all good things must come to an end. And that change is the only constant. So, it is time! Time to move on! But this time it wasn’t easy. My time took a while to come. But when it came it was generous. It allowed me to have faith and fortify my belief.
I took a leap of faith and dived right into uncharted waters. This water body is massive, unlike anything I have seen before, but time had prepared me for it, and it was time. Nothing is going to be the same around, but time will tell, me being the auditor I have always been, is going to be the same.
A friend advised me not to play in people’s hands on your way out, referring to the additional ammo I had. I heard him. And finally, I told my friend, “I decided not to play in your hands either”!
Another co-worker advised me to develop some flexibility in my person for this new role I was going to assume. I immediately got it. I was being asked to be willing to make ‘adjustments’ when the situations demanded. I didn’t reply because I knew I’ve been selected and appointed to this new role for what I am!
And I don’t change with a change in the domain hosting me. The domain people need to deal with when dealing with me is @sikandar.usmani!