CHEIA April 2021 Update

Message from the Chair
I hope everyone enjoyed the long Easter weekend.  I like this time of year with its longer days and a nice crop of bank holidays.  Shame that the weather hasn’t caught up yet! This week has seen the easing of some of the lockdown restrictions in England.  I’ve not made a dash for a drink though – it’s a bit too cold outside for my liking!  Maybe by the time hospitality opens up in Wales and Scotland…. 
Juliet Simpson
Chair of CHEIA
Head of Internal Audit, Newcastle University
juliet.simpson@newcastle.ac.uk

CHEIA Conference 2021 – 8 to 10 September 2021
We are pleased to confirm that the CHEIA Conference will be taking place from 08 – 10 September 2021. With so many uncertainties still, we have decided to hold the conference virtually, using the Hopin Virtual Event Platform. Please make arrangements to be part of it.
We are arranging a full programme of presentations, workshops and discussions, with plenty of opportunities to catch up with colleagues. Look out for further details over the coming weeks. Thank you again to those who participated in our recent survey as we have used your feedback to shape the forthcoming event.

CHEIA Bitesize Events
It’s exactly one year ago that we held the first Bitesize session. Special thanks to all our session leaders during these past months and to everyone who has been part of the sessions. Well done all.
Our next one is in a few days and it will be led by Matt Humphrey of RSM. More details on www.cheia.ac.uk. As usual, we welcome any feedback or suggestions you have for future topics. Please email the CHEIA Administrator, Nkechi Ijeomah at contact@cheia.ac.uk or feel free to start a conversation on the Discussion Board on www.cheia.ac.uk.

Quality Assurance Exercise 2021
David Williamson, with input and support from the Executive, has done further work on the CHEIA Quality Assurance Tool, not only to ensure that it reflects the CIIA’s International Professional Practices Framework and rebuild the macros to generate the ‘Spider’ graphs but he has also reflected users’ feedback from the 2020 exercise. We are pleased to share this tool to continue to support the quality assessments required by CIIA standards. Thank you very much, David.
As in previous years, you can use it for self-assessment to meet internal quality review requirements or for a peer-review to meet the external quality review requirements.
We would encourage you to participate in either a self-assessment or peer-review over the spring / summer months and will facilitate the peer-review groupings. The invitation to sign-up will be emailed soon but we will leave it to each group to decide whether the peer-reviews are carried out virtually or in-person.

CHEIA Practitioners’ Group
A good number of colleagues have expressed an interest in being part of the newly emerging Practitioners’ Group. This is a very welcome development and we thank every one of them.
As indicated in Mark Allen’s post on the website Discussion Board, the initial proposal is for the Group to meet monthly, for an hour via Teams. The first meeting is now set for Wednesday 5th May at 10:00 and all those concerned should have received the invitation and link to join the meeting. Watch this space for more from the Group.
In the meantime, what other ideas do you have that can help to make CHEIA work for you and your colleagues? For example, could you write a blog for our website, edit our monthly Update, be a conversation starter on the Discussion Board or get together with others to work on an idea(s) that you feel will be of interest and benefit to HE internal audit? If so, please contact Nkechi at contact@cheia.ac.uk.

CHEIA Mentoring Scheme
You can now catch up with information on the CHEIA mentoring scheme, via a dedicated tab on the website. The scheme offers members a chance to learn from others outside their own teams or institutions and could be particularly useful for those who are members of smaller in-house functions and who may have fewer opportunities to learn and develop in internal audit. As part of the purpose of CHEIA is to bring together members to share ideas, experience, and practice for internal audit in the HE sector, we are keen to foster mentoring relationships across member organisations. Please visit https://cheia.ac.uk/learning/mentoring/ to find out more.

BUFDG Audit Survey
You may have already seen that the 2021 BUFDG Audit Survey report is out. There was an excellent response this year with about 70% of BUFDG members taking part. You can find out more here. In addition to the usual quantitative questions, there were additional questions on satisfaction and perception of value with both internal and external audit and you can find the results in the report. Thank you to Stan Farmer, who on be behalf of CHEIA, worked with BUFDG colleagues to get those additional questions in the Survey and has collated the responses about internal audits undertaken. This is also available to download from the BUFDG website.

May 2021 Update – Be the Guest Editor
We are serious about input from CHEIA members for our Monthly Updates. Are we missing anything? What else will you like to see in the Update? Would you like to be our guest editor for the May issue? If so, we want to hear from you. It will be circulated to members on 10 May so your proposal for the edition should get to Nkechi at contact@cheia.ac.uk by 5 May.  Please send an email to this address to express an interest.

Auditor Spotlight
Shanita Padaruth, Senior Internal Auditor, University of Edinburgh
1. Why did you become an internal auditor?
In my late twenties, I decided upon a (radical) career change, from Dance Teacher/Lecturer to Chartered Accountant! I joined PwC Edinburgh, in their Public Sector team, doing both internal and external audit on a range of interesting clients. I really enjoyed internal audit and decided to focus on that going forward. Not long after I qualified, the job at the University came up and I thought it was perfect for me. Several years (and two babies) later, I’m still enjoying and being challenged by the role.
2. What is your favourite CHEIA memory?
Every time I’m at a CHEIA event, I’m blown away by how friendly everyone is- it’s a genuinely supportive community to be part of. I’ve only made it to one conference but look forward to hopefully attending in 2021.
3. What do you wish you knew more about?
Gosh, so many things I’d like to know more about. I’d love to be one of those people who are good at pub quizzes, but my memory for facts is not great!
4. What’s your favourite food and drink?
I absolutely love all food, but I’m half Mauritian and grew up on amazing curries. So a curry and a glass of wine.
5. Where is the best place you’ve visited and where would you most like to go?
Hmmmm….I’m really lucky as I’ve travelled a lot but it makes this question really hard. I like different places for different reasons but I will go with Buenos Aires. I spent a month there taking tango lessons and learning basic Spanish when I was backpacking around the world – it was pretty awesome. With lockdown curtailing travel, I’d pretty much like to go anywhere right now! Japan is on my must-see list, perhaps when my two wee girls are a bit older.

Contact CHEIA:
contact@cheia.ac.uk