Interim Chief Audit Executive — Delivery

Three kinds of risk, one way up

Conduct concerns, operational failures and financial irregularities tend to travel upward through different channels. A conduct issue goes to compliance or human resources, an operational one to the chief operating officer, a financial one to the finance director, and each reaches the audit committee in a different format and at a different speed. The pattern is dangerous because the most serious problems often span all three: a clinical service under operational strain, with staff cutting corners, that eventually shows up in the numbers. By the time three separate reports are reconciled, the moment to act has passed.

The Interim Chief Audit Executive will join the three into one escalation model, reporting to the Audit Committee Chair with executive authority for 24 months. That authority is real. You will design how decisions are made under the single model, including what local heads may settle themselves, and specify the case an investment, staffing or control request has to make. Each commitment receives your ruling to proceed, wait or stop. Plans that leave exposure with nobody answerable, and investment cases with no word on adoption, dependencies or the downside, end with you. You will approve the leadership team and the escalation route, settle disputes with operating heads before resources are committed, and set when the board is shown progress, overruns and unresolved choices. Internal audit's independence remains the anchor throughout: the model is designed so that audit can still test it.

How the model should take hold

The first ninety days should close with the Audit Committee Chair having agreed a single escalation model covering conduct, operational and financial risk. Around month nine the audit plan should be aligned to that model, with findings of all three types routed to people accountable for resolving them. By month 24 the unified model should have been tested by internal audit and reported to the audit committee as one view of risk, so that the committee sees a problem once, early, and whole.

The executive, and how we will meet

In healthcare and life-science services you have made risk and compliance calls where waiting would have cost real money, and you have led geographic expansion, succession and buy-side M&A in businesses with at least $700 million of revenue and 3,900 people, reaching two or more countries. The seat looks for level 4 in risk judgement, and for assurance testing, regulatory engagement and risk appetite at level 3. You know how to turn incomplete evidence into a decision that can be reversed, then tighten it as facts improve. You have withheld funding from projects whose users and downside nobody could name, then rebuilt the capacity the business actually needed. You can explain an open gap to an audit committee chair without using uncertainty as a reason to wait, and you will stop a commitment without first securing every country leader's consent. You expect to stay accountable for the whole 24 months.

You will meet the Audit Committee Chair twice: by video, in confidence, during week one, and again in week three, working together on how the escalation model would operate. Week five puts you in a room with executives who each head a function, and week seven with the full board. After every stage, our view follows in writing within three working days.