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Complex Financial Disclosures: The board shoulders the ultimate responsibility for the integrity of the corporation's financial disclosure. The challenge for internal auditors is to identify if there are discrepancies in company’s financial statements, confirm whether they are abiding by the financial reporting standards, verify whether sufficient controls are in place, and affirm whether shareholders or potential investors or lenders have sufficient information to make informed decisions. The Management is responsible for a fair presentation of the financial statements but the internal audits department must ensure that the financial statements do pass the litmus test.

Complex Business Models: The board and management are responsible for ensuring the integrity of the business, while the internal auditor is responsible for validating, directly or indirectly, whether the company's business model is sound. Internal audits confront issues like: “Will the company be able to survive, or compete in the market?” “Does it adhere to sound business practices?” “Does it have appropriate place for risk management and corporate governance programs in organization?” Moreover, with communication shrinking the world, and global economies growing ever more intricately connected, organizations operate in a far more complex fashion than before. This increases the potential for negative circumstances like inconsistency in enforcing audit processes across business units, erroneous data collection, and various gaps that result from isolated silos of information. It is difficult to gain the comprehensive visual map of the entire business, essential to effective management of risk, governance, compliance and quality issues. The audit lifecycle can often meet a variety of roadblocks that drag deadlines and jeopardize the quality and legal safeguards.

Growing Regulatory Guidelines and Compliance Demands: The global regulatory environment is in an arena of constant change. Stipulations and guidelines are regularly reviewed and refined to retain their effectiveness. Very often, different countries may have distinct recommendations or legal expectations that can complicate the role and consistency of internal audit process across a geographically spread enterprise. Whether it is ISO, SEC or SOX guidelines, companies are now expected to proactively initiate internal, IT-enabled enterprise-wide audit solutions that ensure compliance.

Risk Quantification: Risk is an integral part of any endeavor. The risk management unit and the risk management committee are responsible for risk management, but it is the internal auditor's task to ensure the risk management program works. An effective internal audit management system depends on the ability to build process cycles against an accurate matrix of assessed risk. However, given the dynamic regulatory environment and the complex inter-connectedness of business functionalities, it is often extremely difficult to assess the multi-faceted nature of business risk.

Governance: An ideal corporate governance framework consists of seven entwined elements: the board and its committees, legal and regulatory concerns, business practices and ethics, disclosure and transparency, ERM, monitoring, and communication. It is the task of internal auditors to review each of these elements, and report their findings on a scorecard, rating their maturity along a scale as "compliant", "developed", or "advanced." At the outset, the CAEs need to review key organizational documents such as articles of incorporation, board and committee minutes, the annual report, investor relations policy, code of conduct and ethics, shareholder rights, and board calendar of events.

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As the role of the internal auditor shifts, through regulatory changes or a more volatile economy, so, too, do the skills required to do the job well.

The skills shift is demonstrated by what companies expect of the internal audit function. Technical skills are a prerequisite, but those skills alone are not enough as the job’s scope broadens.

“The evolution of the skills of internal audit professionals is aligning with, or is corresponding to, the evolution of the profession itself,” said Richard Chambers, chief executive and president of the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA).