Executive Summary
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Start with an understanding of, and an internationally recognized and accepted definition of, sustainability in your organization.
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Relate this definition to your organization’s vision statement, strategies, and key objectives.
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Relate this definition to your terms of reference for internal auditing. Sustainability should be there as part of your role to provide assurance in the management of risk and controls.
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In today’s and tomorrow’s internal auditing engagements, the sustainability of your organization and of the planet should always be among your assurance objectives.
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If your terms of reference include assurance of governance in your organization, you have a much wider contribution to make in sustainability programs at board level.
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Whatever your internal auditing assurance role is in sustainability, you have the challenge and opportunities to develop this into consultancy and teaching roles covering all aspects of sustainability, at all levels in your organization.
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Contributing to the sustainability of your organization is the pinnacle of added value from your best-practice internal auditing services.
Introduction
Sustainability programs have three aims: people, planet, and profit. Few organizations today, across all sectors, will be without some form of sustainable development program—be it for altruistic reasons, required by regulation, or to stay at the cutting edge in their competitive market places. There can also be strong economic, environmental, and social reasons for marketing sustainable products and services: for reputational reasons and to control energy costs, or, even more importantly, to attract and keep both staff and investment.
Sustainability means more than just the economic, environmental, and social challenges an organization faces in its everyday and future operations: it means the ethics in these operations, touching on all the lives of those in the organization, its stakeholders, and the planet. The objectives of all sustainable development programs must be measured, and the results reported in and outside the organization. Stakeholders and society need to be assured independently that such measures are recorded accurately and in timely fashion before being reported. There are opportunities for internal auditing to contribute its independent and objective assurance services as an auditor as well as a consultant and teacher. Such a contribution can take best-practice internal auditing to a high level of added value.
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