Ep 216: Finding Your Path in Internal Audit w/ Marie Walsh (Spotify)

One of the values that I teach my team, which I wish everybody would implement is just leave the places you go better than the Faldo. This episode is brought to you by Green Skies Analytics, an auto-analytic service provider that works with internal audit departments that have data analysts and are still frustrated with trying to make analytics actually work. Art getting the expected ROI who can't break through the communication barrier between the analysts and the audit team and those that need experience direction for an audit analytic strategy and process. Those that feel like they've wasted time and money on trainings aren't getting the value they want, not prioritizing the highest risk areas for the organizations or have projects that seemingly never get completed. If you do, go to the show notes to this episode and click the green skies analytics link or go to greenskiesanalytics.com to schedule a call and understand how green skies analytics makes analytics actually work for internal audit. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the audit podcast. I'm your host Trent Russell and today on the show we have Marie Walsh. She is the head of internal audit and risk at Spotify. A lot of times we work in questions based on the guest passion. So whatever they are especially passionate about within the audit function, that's what we talk about. And so from Marie that was very much immediately as she said she likes her passion is helping the folks on their team basically find their path whether that's inside internal audit or if that means them going outside of internal audit. Whatever the case is the case may be but that's her passion really helping her people and so we hit on that and exactly how she does that part of that process is with her one on ones that she has routinely with her team and so we talk about specifically what questions do you ask during that process? How do you run that? If you don't have a one on one with folks in your team I'd highly recommend it. Obviously you have to kind of scale that depending on the size of your team. So maybe that's you know you push it down to directors managers whatever the case may be. But either way, highly recommend that if you are not and if you are not. Obviously take a listen to Marie's protocol for doing that. I know we talk about aside from all the usual stuff that we hear the CAE want you know inside assurance all that kind of good stuff what do you actually want as a CAE and I absolutely love Marie's answer. I'm sure the board and the executives have Spotify also love her answer. Marie's one of those people you kind of get a vibe from pretty early on in doing this and go yeah I would absolutely work for you. So I don't even know Spotify has positions open right now but if they do and you're looking I would put that one on your radar Marie seems like the type of person that we all want to work for. Here we go. Alright what is in your either your internet browsing history or your chat GPT history your llama history if you have a LLM or Jin AI tool of choice what's in there what's going on in your world. So most of what I use it for is to help me make messages I'm writing there. You know if I have a bunch of bullet points I think in bullet points but a lot of people don't want to read messages that are just bullet points so I use it to kind of help me turn that into a more user friendly message and sometimes I ask it can you make this more exciting can you make this funnier can you make this more convincing. I think from a silly side one of the things I did recently is we have a we have an on site for Easter which is wonderful and I they always have a special instructions feel because you can order ahead and so I've been asking it like can you give me funny things to put on the special instructions is come over the couple things I'm still waiting for it to get a little bit better but I just like that because I feel like those people are working so hard all day long and like if it gives them 10 seconds of a last and also I've done my part for the day. Yeah it's an active kindness that I love using it for something like that that's a really good. Yes. Yes and I was also laughing or seeking you know internet history it's probably shoes even though I worked in the tech industry for years I have not given up my fancy high heels it's kind of a trademark at this point. So it's just shoes that comes up in my you know contextual ads to it's it's kind of funny to me I can feel the audience pressuring me to ask you this follow up question. Oh no the high heel from spanks have you seen that are you going to buy those. I have not seen it my guess is if it's wacky then I'm not going to get it very traditional when it comes to my shoes. It's pretty wacky it's like yeah it's almost like an athletic shoe with a heel definitely not okay all right definitely not I showed it I don't know how I came across actually I think it was on LinkedIn I was like a big story that day on LinkedIn that they launched the shoe showed to my wife and she was like immediately no no didn't fit her vibe either okay yeah sticking to the super serious topics that we have here emojis and emails thumbs up thumbs down for you. Thumbs up but limited it has to be the really basic ones it's got to be thumbs up thumbs down smile frown maybe angry face. I have teenage nieces I've touched them enough about other ones that I'm not going to take a chance with anything else so I would be maybe about five of them I'm willing to use. And it's got to be the right audience you know with my team sure with friends of internal audit risk short but limit but generally yes I think cast yeah I didn't think about the risk of because they mean. I'll stick to smiley faces anything else I feel like there's some hidden meaning that I don't understand so you're probably right I'll stick to just the smiley face the angry face the thumbs up the thumbs down the occasional little finger i'm the big fan of them see I won't go there i'm gonna go there. We have we have them in slack to and you know some of them are customized so I like some of the customized ones I like the plus one and then we have one that's kind of the spot if I logo as a heart now and that one that one gets a lot of use to imagine that's kind of a nice one so okay alright a little bit more serious what's what analytics look like for your team. I think on an analytics we have the standard work stuff that says you know have you considered analytics in your planning but I I feel like people. In corporate analytics without necessarily realizing that they're doing data analytics. I think it's a teacher is more about using data to support the issues that they found it's not always about finding the issues but it's can you size up a finding and explain why the risk is what it is based on for us number of users or number of listening hours at this matters for or you know euros let's let's get the actual facts so when someone asks us why do you have this on the report. This could impact. X thousand users or X millions of users we need to know that so that we're making the right judgment call and pushing management to make the right change based on how big it is. I think we couldn't do things where there's a lot more data analytics are happening but our company does a lot of that themselves so I think the the glamour in the mystery of data analytics and a little different for us just being. Such a day of heavy company it's more about what analytics from other teams can we use to be part of our auto reports. Yeah and I think the taking the results quantifying them like you're talking about and those are simple data visualizations like it sounds like for you it's probably something over time or X amount of these compared to X amount of these or this changed over this and those are simple Excel. Visualizations that you can still make look really good like you don't need an expensive visual tool for especially just the audit report piece that you can just put slap in there if you do it correctly especially if you tell that story with data. They might not even read the rest of it I mean if I was flipping through flipping through I saw the graph and went well this thing okay that's a problem yeah we need to go fix that. You think that visualization can be incredibly powerful to people because if you write a paragraph the paragraph like being you might lose them in the paragraph. But it pictures I mean that silly thing picture speaks a thousand words it really does when it comes to data because you see the spikiness you see whatever's weird about it but it doesn't have to be data analytics with like a capital D and a capital A it can be data just little data. Yeah, my little letters. Yeah as long as the results are making an impact. Right. That's what I mean throw it at a pivot table do you get good result you know did you find something from there. It's great. That's an analytics in my opinion. Pivot tables that's all I need in my life. Mostly I agree. That's the three things we teach are basically no matter the tool is the functionality of a pivot table joining tables together and then using the internet to figure out the rest and. Yes. That's it. That's the ground level foundational for literally every analytics tool that I've ever used is I go and figure out those two things and then I just Google the rest and configured out. Exactly. Exactly. Well no you're. Your passion is helping your team kind of find their path as it intersects with internal audit. But what do you mean by that? Maybe a little bit more detail. And then tactically, how do you go about doing that? Especially because I know you have people all over. So how do you do that? And I've always had people all over. A lot of the jobs that I've had have people in different geographies from where I am. I think as IA is either a career or it can be one or two stocks on the journey of your career. And it could be at the beginning, it could be at the middle. It may need to be towards the end when you become a senior. I think you interviewed someone I listened to one of your podcasts on that long ago. She was a CAE of an oil and gas company. And she had come for offer, I think from operations. She came from, yeah, she was a geographic information system. Different things in the same market. That's who I think you have. And so there's different times when IA can be the right place for someone to be. And I guess that could be multiple times, it could be at any point in your career. It's a great training route. And so many of us have come from big four or we've come from enormous audit shops that have kind of stick with the external audit firms. And then narrative is move up, move up, become the next level because their business and I will realize on that. That's, it makes sense, right? The longer you've been working there, the higher a read you can charge and you're expected to move up. But to be quite honest, it's not the right career path for everyone who starts out as staff in a public account in firm. We know that, right? But it's hard to hear that message and then leak an alternate choice. So to me, I think it's important to voice that idea to people. I'm just so, I try to be very transparent with the team and say, this is not always everybody's path forever. You can move up linearly and in Toronto. Obviously, that's possible. Maybe it's in Toronto, maybe it's second line. So that's been my career experience is moving up kind of second line, third line. But I want to, I like to give examples of people who have done tours in internal audit. So you come in, either you came in early in career and then spun out to another role. Or you came in and you did a rotation and the rotation and just built someone, it was built in for you to do internal audit. I do this most kind of privately and publicly. So privately in a counseling session, a one on one, a skip level. But I also did it really publicly with my team about two years ago. We had an offset and I asked a past colleague to come in and actually walk through her career path with the team. And she had been in internal audit with me, you know, 10 years ago. And then she ended up leaving and joined, actually, I think she started a fraud detection team at one of my jobs. And it was an off shoot of an audit that she had done. So that was kind of a really cool thing for the overall team. And she kind of walks through, what did that mean? And then eventually she would count a different role in operations and she moved up and became a director there. She is now back in internal audit and has taken that experience as she said, you know, so much that I've learned of being part of operations coming back to audit will change the way that I direct audits and the way that I want them to happen going forward. And so that's a very kind of business focus way, but other examples that are out there. And this is another one of my favorite ones. I had a coworker here at this company. He was on our team. He rotated out into another part of the organization. And then a few years later he said, you know what? I think I want to go be a doctor. And yeah, sure. And I mean, he decided that this was the right direction for him to go. And I was so supportive. I was like, I want to hear all about it. You tell me everything that you need to do. You know, if you need a letter recommendation, lucky now, I will support this. So I think it's important for people to see those examples. I think that's the most important part because they're not the typical path. So you have to see something to understand and believe in it. And then the second piece is during my actual development talks with my team, I try to push them to say, if you're not doing this job, what other job at Spotify would you do? And it really freaks people out and you ask them that question. I remember asking a couple women on my team that question, you know, it was the first time we had a development talk and they just had, you know, wide eyes. Oh my goodness. You know, why are you asking me this question? And my feeling about it is because no one's ever asked you that question before. And if you've never been asked the question, you probably not reflected on it. And so do I go want to go be an operations manager? Do I want to go be part of the legal team? Do I want to go be a chief of staff? There are all different options that are out there and it doesn't have to be just I hop over to second line of defense or I hop over to accounting or I hop over to information security. You know, those hops can be bigger. A lot of things that we do as internal auditors can be spun to be something else in a company. We know how so many different parts of the organizations work. We can fit it in a lot of places. But you have to make that opportunity happen for yourself. So if that's some sort of dream, how do you get there? I feel like there's probably CIEs listening or hiring managers listening being like, it's hard enough to retain the folks we have already. You want me to coach them out of it. You know, it takes a lot of work just to keep them. Now we're trying to get rid of them. How do you kind of balance that maybe in your head or how maybe that is the way to ask it. Maybe confident or comfortable going, I'm okay. Coach, you out of this position or getting you somewhere else because I know we can fill your spot easily or like, how does that work in your head? That is the type of situation. It is definitely a worker to do when you have small teams, right? Because I know a lot of audit departments are four people, six people. And it's a risky maneuver to do. And me, the more people you have that are friends of internal audit outside of your department, the easier your life becomes. So I should have counted this. I would say I think we have about five or six people that have rotated out of the internal audit from, from Spotify's internal audit team. And I still consider them kind of friends of internal audit. They mean me, someone that we don't need to talk to very often. But one of them is now an RPP team and I honestly messed up one of my own purchase orders. I was able to send them a text message and said, can you help me? And that just made my day a little bit easier. But yeah, I think there is that reality of, yes, it's hard to keep people in the door. But it's also exciting to think, do I come here and internal audit is not the only place I could be? I think it's important to work for a company that you want to do what that company does, right? I'm very much like being here. I like the mission of our company. I like that we are helping creators earn money. I like that, you know, since we're both a free and a premium service like that anybody can use our app. You don't have to have money in your pocket to use our app, but you still get the enjoyment of the music and the podcasts and the audiobooks. And I think it's really important that you want that because then internal audit is not your only place you can be. Maybe I want to be in creator management. Maybe I want to be helping negotiate contracts related to other content. If you're into what we do, it doesn't necessarily matter what part you, what part you play in that. And I believe you because when you and I talked off air, we'll say, I forget what the nature of the question was asked, but you said, I genuinely love working here and the mission. That's what it's about. To me, it's about helping the organization. And it wasn't, I didn't feel like it was fluff coming for me or like, let me say this company line. I believed you very much when you said it. And so I'd 100% believe what you're saying right now for those that are like, I probably just saying that. No, that's not the case. So I know that's not the case. Yeah. I mean, I was when this job came open and I actually came in through a slightly different role still within internal audit, but a different role. And I was so excited because I knew the business model. I knew what was happening in the audio industry because it's been something that I've been interested in for in around 25 years. I mean, since high school. So there is a part of me that's just interested in what we do and what is happening in this industry. And I think it would be, it would be hard for me to be part of a company that I'm not interested in what we do. Those clients were always hard for me when I was in public accounting. You know, I want to know what the business is, but. I'm not that into, I won't say anything, so it'll turn off any listeners, but you know, there are certain things that are just not in my interest set if you want. Doesn't make your brain happy, that's what I say. If it doesn't make your brain happy, that's the problem. Exactly. Exactly. You mentioned your one-on-ones and I know those are very important to you. I believe you're doing quarterly and I think they're critically important also. When you help folks understand to the degree that you can, you know, specific questions that you might ask, I think there's a ton of value in asking a good question despite what maybe listeners are like, "Dude, your question sucked." But there is a ton of value in being able to ask good questions, so I'm very curious about that. And then any general themes that you're hearing from your auditors that you might have heard over the past two or three quarters or so. Because I always want to know how they are, not how their projects are, not a status report, not what are the findings, how are you? And not just their work life, right? That's the most important thing because we have a relationship at work, that's what we're here to talk about, but I do try to understand a little bit about who they are as a person. But I also try to be incredibly respectful of how much people want to talk about that. A lot of people are open-buck. There are some people I probably know more than I should. And then there are some where they don't want to talk about it. And that is okay. And, but that also helps me know that a little bit as a person. If you're a private person, then that's great. That's all I need to know about you. And I'm happy with that. Um, I want to know, you know, what's your favorite coffee order or do you like cookies? But, you know, I think it's important to know that. And that eventually usually leads back to how are you doing at work? Is there too much happening? Is there, um, are you not, is there somewhere where you're not getting support? Is there something that you don't know how to handle? Um, but I really try to link it as an open-ended question. I might even ask something as simple as, how's your work stuff? And that can go in a lot of different directions. Um, I can hear anything from, I'm unhappy with how my socks testing is going for reasons. I, to, I want to get challenged in a new area. Next year, we're going to start, you know, we're doing auto planning or, you know, annual auto planning for next year. They want to know, hey, I'm really interested in looking at this area around content management. So sometimes it comes up there. Um, but one of the best things I heard recently was two people are working together a project in their peers. Um, but one is the audit leader and one is, is a member of the team. And the team member said, I'm really like working with this team weight. You know, he's really organized. I'm learning things from him. This was a great project. And had I not had that one on one, I probably would have never gotten that feedback. But that kind of, where you talk about making my brain happy, that made me bring happy. I mean, it's just me happy to hear that, you know, these two people are peers and they're learning from each other and they're having that opportunity to do this on a specific audit that the, um, team leader is a specialist on the other individual is not. So that's something I keep hoping in happens with audits. So I'm hoping I'll hear that more in one or ones. Um, but that's, that was playing a set. That was the best thing I heard recently. Um, which was fun. How long have you been doing the one on one's, more or less so like how long you've been doing it, but, um, changes you've seen from when you didn't do those to changes you've seen since you started doing those. So when I first became the head of internal audit, I had a, I had a bigger team. Um, and so it was not feasible for me to do one of ones with everybody. So what I had originally been doing was, obviously one of ones with my directs, um, and then one on once with the, um, the next level, down, kind of the senior managers. And then I was alternating quarters where I would either talk to a whole level of people. So all staff senior auditors and then all the managers or I would be talking to them, because my team used to be broken up in business units. So I would talk to the team that focuses on ads or the team that focuses on content. When the team became smaller last year, I changed that. I said, okay, now I'm going to meet with everybody one on one. We're just going to make it work. Um, and I think it was really necessary because of the team size change. Um, the team needed more of that FaceTime. They needed more of that one on one time. I also think it's really important because I have so many people all over the world. Um, there are some of them that I don't get the chance to see them in person very frequently. Um, I have people who are remote workers all over the US, a couple of people in Europe, there are remote workers. So I think that is, it's important because you don't have that bump into the hallway time that I would have if we were all here in the same office together. Um, I find that it took, it took a few iterations for people to get used to the meetings. Um, to understand that I'm not looking for a status report. I'm not, I can get that from our, our, our paper tool. I don't want that. I want to know what is going on with this person today. And what is it that we need to do to make things better or different for them, for the team, for the company? I need to have that moment. And I'm starting to see that change a little bit. The team is getting more comfortable with it. And the people who were a little bit more nervous about it are getting a lot less nervous. Um, so it's been good to see that as, as we've gone on. So it's been about 18 months and been doing it that way. Yeah, I could definitely see myself, you know, early in my career, if you had a one on one with me six months after I graduated college, I'd be like, what, tell you anything, that this terrible, but over time, like I could go, okay, yeah, this is genuine and, um, make, I would imagine pretty therapeutic for them also for some people. It is. Yeah, absolutely. I would be one of those three. I do shut up. I don't need to know about, you know, how your parents raised you or anything like that. Like go pay somebody for that. You know, like I would, I would take advantage of it. I, I listen to her. I've been. Yeah. I, I don't know. And open my, I don't know what the right term is on that. All right. So I was very curious, again, specific questions. If nothing else, you know, selfishly, uh, that I could even take to ask to future guests. So I was, uh, glad, excited to hear how you're running those. I hope other people start to implement those are, are inspired to, especially if they do have the team size that does make sense to be able to do that real quick on that. So let me ask this real quick, follow up how long those typically last. So the people are going, okay, I've got 20 auditors times this amount of recorder. I could do that. Um, usually 30 minutes. Some of them are or a couple people that I know I need. West. Okay. All right. Thank you. Uh, with the lit said, uh, your time, I'll throw it to you. The floor is yours. What do you want to leave the audience with? Um, so about this. And for me, one of the values that I teach my team, which I wish everybody would implement is just leave the places you go better than the fellow. And I talk about to the team about this as like in and on at standpoint, um, but it applies to life, right? If you see trash on the ground, do something about it. Um, you know, I used to work for a hospitality company and we were expected to do that. If you were in a hotel, it did not matter that you were from the corporate office, pick up the candy wrapper and put it in the trash. Um, and this has been kind of following my whole, me my whole life. I was a girl scout for a very long time. And that's something we learn. You go to a campsite. You should be leading the campsite better than you found it. Now to apply that to audit, auditors are hard on people. You take them out of their day to day. They're asking them questions, you're making them nervous. You know, no, what's going to happen? And then potentially at the end, you're going to leave them a list of things that they have to fix. Well, that's kind of stressful by there's a right way to do these things. You have to go and you have to be pleasant. You have to work with them on a timing. You have to make sure that we're making their process better in a way that's logical to them. So it's not just about the results, it's about how we do our jobs. Do your job with a smile, you know, be understanding of people's schedules and what's going on with their life. Yes, we have to get the work done, but there's a right way to do it. And you know, it can be as simple as remembering their dog's name or that it's their birthday or something like that. That makes people's days better in just the highest little way. And to your Bible, can you make their brain happy? Well, yes, but don't just do that at work. Do that in the world, you know, so many need you to help them up the subway stops with their baby carriage or You know, we're right down here in World Trade Center. Somebody's lost. You can tell they're lost. Just point them in the right direction. You know, you don't even have to say much. It's such a new or thing to just, you take your phone off and you go, that way is West, you're with and gone. And you've just helped that person and made their day a little bit better. So for me, that's the most important thing is make people's days just the tiniest bit better. And I think it'll do us all a lot good. (upbeat music) - Hey everyone, thank you very much for listening to this episode of the Audit Podcast. Whatever platform you're listening on right now, I'm sure there's a subscribe button somewhere. So please hit the subscribe button there. If you're listening through iTunes or Spotify, feel free to go give us that five star rating. It only took me about 16 seconds to give myself a five star review and it really helps to get future guests to come on the show so we'd really appreciate that. Lastly, be sure to check out the show notes and follow us on all our social media channels on Instagram, on LinkedIn and on TikTok. Also, if interested, please sign up for our weekly newsletter from the Audit Podcast. Thank you all, have a great one. (upbeat music)