(2020-11-18). Invited by the Central Auditing Authority of the Swiss Canton of Basel-Stadt, Dr. Philipp Wilhelm led a workshop about effective internal audit report writing. In this three-hour workshop, Philipp Wilhelm used a mixed theory and practice approach. He presented a model of effective internal audit report writing ('from insight to impact') and during each step of the model participants were asked to apply the learnings to a real-life internal audit report which was distributed beforehand as practical example. In a second part of the workshop, the participants discussed their suggestions for improvements and the internal audit report was seen to improve gradually in little iterations. In the end, the theoretical model was trained and the learnings were reinforced in a practical implementation.
The training took place in the historic Parliament of the Canton of Basel-Stadt, which was accessible to the workshop only due to the assembly's inability to use their Parliament in times of pandemic spatial constraints. As can be seen in the picture, the room is a real wooden masterpiece of medieval craftsmanship and artistry. To find out more about the Central Auditing Authority of the Canton Basel-Stadt, visit https://www.finanzkontrolle.bs.ch/ueber-uns/team.html.
(2020-10-30). Philipp Wilhelm gave a speech on the future skills and competences of the internal auditor of tomorrow. He was invited to speak at the virtual conference of the Practice Group Transformation & Digitalisation of the Institute of Internal Auditors Switzerland (IIAS).
In his presentation, Dr. Wilhelm gave an overview of the current disruption in the labour market, which will also impact on the internal audit profession. Intelligent automation will require respelling of many employees, while most of their employers are still not prepared for that task. At the same time, the half-life of skills continues to shrink and the time needed to close a skill gap is massively increasing. Today, digital skills continue to be important but soft skills have surpassed these technical skills in importance. Looking at skill rankings of labour market futurists, he pointed out that the willingness to be flexible, agile, and adaptable to change (IBM Whitepaper 2019) and the soft skills adaptability and creativity (LinkedIn Learning Report 2020) are increasingly found in the top positions of skill rankings. Adaptability and agility training, however, can still not be found in the internal audit world. He announced his plans to launch the Approved Agile Auditor (AAA) to close this gap. For more information on the Approved Agile Auditor (AAA), visit https://aaa.audit-trainer.com. For more information on the Practice Group Transformation & Digitalisation of the Institute of Internal Auditors Switzerland (IIAS), visit https://www.iias.ch/en/erfa-groups/transformation-and-digitalisation/.
(2020-08-27). Every second year, the University of St. Gallen organizes a management conference of and for its alumni, this year on the topic 'Hacking physical space and time'. Already today, agility and adaptability are already important competences in order to be successful tomorrow. The organizers of the HSG Alumnikonferenz 2020 have therefore decided to shed some light on how we can measure and increase our personal adaptability and they have invited Dr. Philipp Wilhelm, HSG alumnus of 1999 & 2005 and AQ Foundation Practitioner, to organize a workshop on agility and adaptability.
In this online workshop, Philipp Wilhelm gave a brief overview of what adaptability is, how it can be differentiated from agility and how it can be measured, before opening a vivid discussion among the workshop participants. Fellow HSG alumni from all over the world shared their first-hand experiences with massive disruptions in the course of the Corona pandemic, how their personal life was affected and what they learnt while coping - be it in Argentina, Dubai or Switzerland. To find out more about the HSG Alumnikonferenz, visit https://alumnikonferenz.ch.
(2020-04-01). The fourth year in a row, and the last time before our Approved Agile Auditor (AAA) certification will be launched, Philipp Wilhelm has led a one-day workshop on Agile Internal Auditing in the official Training Program of the Institute of Internal Auditing Switzerland (IIA Switerland). Having started in 2017, this workshop has evolved each year thanks to new insights, the research of the Swiss Institute of Management Renewal, and the feedback of course participants. In 2020, due to the lockdown in spring the course was given online as instructor led training.
Profiting of the hands-on practical character of the workshop, the participants could gain a better understanding of internal audit processes and how Scrum and agile frameworks can be applied therein. They gained practical experience in designing agile internal audit processes and could practice agile work processes with an agile software used during the workshop. To find out more about trainigs of IIA Switzerland, visit https://www.iias.ch/aus-weiterbildung/nationale-konferenz/.
