How to Advance as an Audit Leader: 5 Ways to Get Out of Your Own Way

What makes a great leader? No platitudes allowed.

I’m only looking for specific, actionable answers. Platitudes can be inspirational, but they don’t tell you what to do, how, and why. 

What are the specific activities that help people advance in their careers to become effective audit leaders? What have they figured out that their peers haven’t?

“Rising Audit Leaders,” the second webinar in Internal Audit Collective’s four-part Women in Leadership series, offered plenty of excellent answers. During the August 2026 webinar, Internal Audit Leader Jan Murry moderated a panel discussion with Director of Internal Audit Brianna Bazzy, Senior Director of Internal Audit Ana Toomer, and Internal Audit Risk and Compliance Leader Darya Lemmens.

So let’s move past the overly generic motivational-poster speak and toward some actual specifics. Read on for actionable ideas about how you can advance your audit career and leadership skills.

1. Move Beyond Technical Expertise Toward POV and Partnership

Early in your career, you earn credibility through your technical expertise. You’re in the room because of your knowledge — of SOX, ICFR, audit requirements, risk-based auditing, or another specialty focus. 

As your career advances, however, building credibility requires expanding your knowledge by developing: 

• An understanding of the business
• A perspective on how it can improve 
• Stakeholder relationships that let you deliver both

We’ve said it a zillion times. We’ll keep saying it until it’s no longer Internal Audit’s core identity crisis.

Staying relevant and providing value requires moving away from being seen as “compliance police” and toward being seen as trusted business advisors. Said Brianna, “You don’t ever want to come in with a ‘gotcha’ mindset — like, ‘I’m here to find all the errors’. It should really be a genuine collaboration.” 

Our panelists stressed it time and again: They became leaders and trusted advisors by translating their technical expertise into relevant business insights. Their recommendations:

• Get involved in ERM work. Ana’s involvement with ERM has been central to helping her build business acumen beyond Internal Audit. “Talking about enterprise risk from a strategic standpoint helps me understand the muscle that drives the company,” said Ana. 
• Bring a point of view on how the business can improve. As Darya explained, “Great audit leaders not only focus on identifying the risk, but also have an opinion and point of view about what business should do about it. Growing outwards from my technical expertise and providing that opinion shifted me from just being a technical expert to more of a trusted advisor.”
• Speak their language, focusing on the impacts that matter. Added Ana, “It’s helping them translate [Internal Audit’s insights] into actual outcomes and impact. It’s helping them prioritize and decipher, ‘What does this mean for our organization from a strategic priorities perspective? How will this impact us?’ And helping them think through what decisions need to be made.” To that end, Ana talked about the value of taking a step back to see the big picture before sharing your findings — as in, “I have all these findings, but does it really impact the organization? Is it valuable and impactful?” 
• Help THEM see the big picture. Said Jan, “A lot of stakeholders are so heads down trying to get through their day-to-day priorities that they’re not necessarily seeing what's upstream and downstream… is there waste in the process, is there risk, is there opportunity? In Internal Audit, we are in a unique position to provide that perspective.”
• Bring relevant information focused on helping the business. For example, Brianna tries to bring benchmarking data, analytics, and technology recommendations to the table to “help them improve their processes — not undermine them.” (We’ll go deeper on this topic next week, sharing insights from the Internal Audit Collective’s CAE leadership survey.)

2. Build a Reputation for Making Things Better

The panelists acknowledged that — especially early in our careers — we feel pressure to be the “best,” to have our performance stand out among our peers so that we’re the ones chosen for advancement. We’re proving ourselves at an individual level.

Being the “best,” however, isn’t what paves the way for advancing as a leader. What matters more is how you impact your team and organization. 

That’s why our panelists recommended:

• “Build a reputation for making things better,” advised Ana. Even though communicating challenges is part of our job description, we have to build a reputation for being solution-oriented and helping stakeholders decipher “how to prioritize — how to connect the dots.” Said Ana, “You want them to think: ‘If Internal Audit is involved, this is going to be better than when we started’.”
• Enable others to take ownership. “Consciously shift your mindset from trying to be the smartest person in the room,” suggested Brianna. “You don't have to be the person that does it all. Be the leader who amplifies the intelligence of your whole team and everyone around them, and make space for them to do their best work. Then you can do your best work as well.”
• Delegate in ways that serve everyone’s skill sets (including yours). We’ve all heard the advice: To get promoted, start operating at the next level. Darya explained, “Not every assignment is developing the judgment, influence, or enterprise perspective you will need at the next level. And it’s really hard to develop those skills if you're spending all your time focused on operating at your current level… Sometimes, growth actually requires you to say no, or to delegate the work that you already know how to do well. Not only so that others can learn, but so you can take on something you’re less comfortable with.”

3. Don’t Let Perfectionism Get in the Way of Progress

Maturing as an Internal Audit professional and leader means getting over any hang-ups about having to be perfect, or deliver “perfect” deliverables. 

For example, there’s often a significant lag between final findings and issuance of the final audit report. Why make stakeholders wait to receive your valuable findings and recommendations? 

Your insights become less valuable — and less relevant — the longer stakeholders have to wait.

• Prioritize relevance and value. “Beware of perfectionism,” cautioned Ana. With AI, regulations, and risk moving so fast, we should be delivering relevant insight right when it matters. “Something doesn't have to be perfectly packaged before sharing insights with management. That’s something I had to break off — that I need a report to be ‘perfectly perfect’ before I release it. Think about what you can produce and launch while it’s still relevant to the business.” For example, Jan’s team actually prioritized reducing its reporting lag, cutting it by ~60 days. Find out how at APEX.
• Accept challenges and failures as learning opportunities — and move on. Letting go of what didn’t go right (e.g., an audit that went badly, an irate stakeholder, a challenging employee situation) was something Jan struggled with. “I’d hang onto those things and beat myself up — as Ana talked about, perfectionism. But when I reflect, that’s really what helped me build resilience… those are the points in my career when I’ve learned the most.” So when things don’t go well, said Jan, “Don’t let it derail you.” Instead, step back and refocus on how you’ll grow as a result.  

4. Don’t Go It Alone

Seek out people to advise you, challenge you, advocate for you, and open doors to experiences you may not otherwise have. You’ll go further faster if you’re not trying to figure it all out yourself. 

The panelists shared how investing in sponsors, mentors, coaches, and other relationships helped them accelerate their growth. They advised:

• Open more doors by asking for help. Some people are lucky to have sponsors or mentors take an active interest in developing their career. But you’ll increase your chances if YOU take the initiative. For example, when Brianna wanted to work on her executive presence, she reached out to women in her organization who she thought did it well. Beyond giving Brianna the specific guidance she sought, these conversations established foundations for ongoing relationships.
• Keep investing in those relationships. As you change roles and companies and move forward in your career, don’t leave your mentors, sponsors, coaches, or other relationships in the dust. All of our panelists have made the effort to invest in and maintain these key relationships over the years. These are the people you can continue to turn to with questions and challenges. Speaking of which…
• Build a personal “board of directors,” connecting with and cultivating a group of people who will give you advice and support while challenging you in the right ways. “Your mentors don’t have to come from inside your organization, so be thoughtful as to what that looks like,” said Jan. “There are so many wonderful people out there. The Internal Audit Collective has been a great community for me to find those people.”

5. Make Your Success About Helping Others Succeed

All of our panelists are strong leaders who’ve done well in their careers. They all came to the realization that success isn’t something to be hoarded, but rather something to be shared. 

They’ve increased their impact by moving from doing/directing the work themselves to coaching, delegating, creating ownership, and consciously developing the next generation of leaders. Their advice came straight from the heart:

• Expand how you define success. “I believe that the role of a leader is to create an environment where others can succeed — giving context, clarity, and enough ownership for others to grow,” said Darya. “I believe leadership impact should not only be measured by individual accomplishments, but rather by how much stronger the people around them become.” 
• Be the “genius maker,” not the genius. Said Brianna, “I firmly believe that my job isn't to be the genius in the room who has all the answers. My job is to be the genius maker. I strive to be a leader who amplifies the intelligence and capabilities of my team, rather than being a diminisher who holds the team back.” She mentioned that she was quoting a concept from Liz Wiseman’s book The Multipliers, but Brianna lives this principle daily. (At APEX, she’ll share how she empowered development of the Internal Audit AI Operator role in her organization.)
• Become a mentor/sponsor/coach ASAP. As our careers advance, we have the responsibility to help those following us — as the panel put it, “lifting as we climb.” As Darya shared, “Mentors give you advice, but sponsors use their own credibility on your behalf. In my career, I’ve been fortunate to have leaders that brought me into important stakeholder discussions, introduced me as an expert in a particular area, or gave me stretch assignments that pushed me beyond my current level of expertise. So I learned that, as a leader, I need to do the same for others… actively creating the visibility and the opportunities for them to stretch, and to grow their ownership and influence level.”

THE LAST WORD: Get Specific About Advancing Your Career

We all want to advance in our careers and increase our impact. But it’s easy to get sucked under by the day-to-day, and to lose sight of the things we have to do to make it happen. 

So we’ll keep these ideas as specific and actionable as possible.

If this article resonated with you, here are four ways you can continue the conversation:

• Reach out to someone you admire. Just as Brianna did when she was focused on developing her executive presence, pick someone you admire and want to learn from. It could be someone in your organization, or someone you know from LinkedIn, the Internal Audit Collective, or another professional organization. What do you most admire about them? What can they help you learn? Send them a message telling them — and asking them to speak with you about it. For IAC members: There’s still time to register for IAC Connect, the Internal Audit Collective's 1:1 networking match program, for September 2026. Register here. 
• Take 15-30 minutes today to level up your business acumen. As Darya summarized, “Business acumen boils down to three things: How your company makes money, where it is trying to go, and what could stand in its way.” Pick one of the three and dive in, finding a research or benchmarking report, article, or Internal Audit Collective discussion that you can learn from and/or share with the business. 
• Register for Kendall Berg’s webinar (September 24, 2026) on effective executive communication in the age of AI. As AI absorbs more routine work, the people who advance won’t be the fastest at using the tools — they'll be the ones with strong judgment, credibility, and communication skills. “That Career Coach” Kendall Berg will help you build the executive communication, structured thinking, and leadership alignment skills to stay indispensable.
• Stay tuned for next week’s article, when I’ll share two key findings on the specific activities “great” CAEs do more often than their peers. 

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