Year in Review: The Internal Audit Collective’s Most Impactful Articles of 2025

As you’re thinking about 2026 — identifying opportunities, making plans, and formalizing your strategy for making it all happen — it’s a fantastic time to draw on perspectives and inspirations from your peers. 

How will you change the game in 2026?

What new approaches will be most impactful for your team? 

Throughout 2025, I was amazed and humbled by Internal Audit Collective members’ willingness to share their questions, solutions, insights, and time. We create our articles and eBooks to elevate their ideas and directly respond to their most pressing questions. 

I’m incredibly proud of all we’ve created together. 

Whether you’re focused on upleveling your audit methodology, AI/analytics use, SOX program, or your own career in 2026, here are the most impactful articles I recommend in each area. 

Internal Audit

Implementing an Innovation Process in Internal Audit. For teams low on resources and high on demands (aka everyone), process innovation is a necessity. This simple framework can help you jumpstart ideation and make innovation an ongoing priority — and realistic goal — in 2026.

How to Reduce the Internal Audit Reporting Lag from 99 to 40 Days — or Innovate Any Other Process. Jan Murry and Matt Kohls embraced the Kaizen process to halve their reporting lag and reimagine both planning AND reporting. What process do you need to improve? Their step-by-step process explains how to start small and improve incrementally, ultimately driving big benefits. (We’re also fortunate to have Jan as a COMMAND instructor in 2026. Sign up today.)

How to Build a World-Class Internal Audit Department with Non-Traditional Staffing. CAEs are increasingly under pressure to source critical skills outside traditional auditor competencies. So why not look beyond traditional auditors? Take inspiration from Tom Sanglier, whose cross-pollinating auditor rotation program continually expands his team’s knowledge, capabilities, and relationships. 

How to Perform a Cybersecurity Risk Assessment to Produce a More Relevant, Targeted 2026 Audit Plan. Cyber threats are a top risk, but most CAEs still suffice with broad cyber risk assessments that don’t provide true assurance. Don’t audit “cybersecurity” in 2026. Instead, use Dave Malcom’s framework to identify detailed, relevant audit projects focused on risks that matter. Plus, if you’re an Internal Audit Collective member, you can get ideas and advice directly from Dave during his monthly cybersecurity roundtables in 2026. Bring your questions, audit plans, and risk assessments!

Independence Ain’t Easy. Heading into 2026, many teams are starting to focus on new risk areas, including areas where their organizations don’t have processes in place. With more advisory projects on the horizon, these teams may need to recalibrate their approaches to independence. Don’t let independence concerns keep you from delivering the help your organization needs. These strategies can help you balance independence considerations against your expanding mandate. 

SOX

The State of Internal Audit With SOX Responsibilities: 2025 Benchmarking Survey. This first-of-its-kind survey digs into the day-to-day realities of Internal Audit teams who also shoulder SOX responsibilities, examining audit plan alignment, tech optimization, analytics, controls remediation, key infrastructure, involvement with ERM and connected risk, External Audit reliance, and more. We surfaced six key themes from the data to develop an exciting hypothesis: What if leaning into SOX is actually the key to positioning Internal Audit to take a leading role on connected risk?

External Audit’s Non-Reliance on AI: Work-in-Progress or Emerging Double Standard? This was one of the most frequent topics in Collective discussions throughout 2025, and the conversation will only become more urgent in 2026. Learn key insights Internal Audit Leaders have gleaned from their reliance-related discussions and experiences with External Auditors so far, as well as common issues both sides face. (Volume II of our Gen AI Playbook for Internal Audit will include 10 proven SOX prompts. Look for it in January or February!)

6 Ways to Strengthen Your SOX Team’s Reputation. It’s up to us to show-and-tell the value SOX teams deliver beyond testing. This testing- and donut-inspired article shares down-to-earth ideas for elevating your SOX team’s profile and brand. Share these with your team to up your game in 2026.

Data Analytics

How to Build a Data Analytics Program That Works, Sticks, and Scales. Jim Tarantino is a founding member of the Collective and the tireless instructor of DRIVE, our 16-hour, CPE-eligible training program designed to level up any auditor’s analytics skill set. He’s also the author of our newest eBook. Download it today to learn how to get ahead of common implementation challenges, plan for the big picture, achieve balance across your program, and align the right leaders at the right stages. The eBook also includes insights and actionable ideas from Collective members Tom Buoni, Martin Espinosa, Jerry Hancock, Danielle Ritter, and Sanjay Sharma. 

Member alert: Because analytics skills have become so critical for every Internal Auditor, we’ve decided to make DRIVE free for all Collective members. Members can register here. 

Gen AI

The Gen AI Playbook for Internal Audit — Volume I: Guidance & Practical Use Cases to Implement Today. Almost everyone is telling Internal Auditors to use AI. What they’re largely not telling us? How to do it. Volume I of our Gen AI eBook series is a big first step toward fixing that, providing practical guidance and ready-to-deploy prompts from Collective members who’ve been successfully using Gen AI in their audit methodologies. Group leader Alan Maran, key drivers Alejandro Anievas, Joe Earl, and Kaine Kenerly, and the rest of the Collective’s Gen AI for IA working group put a ton of work into these prompts, and we couldn’t be prouder of the finished product and the impact it’s having.

Career Management

7 Promotable Activities to Help You Advance in Your Internal Audit Career. The old ways of getting promoted are outdated. In fact, being the “best” at your current role may increase the likelihood that leadership will insist on you staying in it. The new ways to get promoted involve focusing on value-producing work that proactively proves your leadership chops. These seven ideas can get you thinking in the right direction.

Building the “Triple Threat” Internal Auditor of the Future. Internal Audit’s role is changing. That means our core competencies are changing, too, enlarging to include AI/analytics, IT Audit, and ongoing innovation of traditional audit practices. Emmanuel Benton, Nicole Brack, Mitch Krzyzek, and Alex Speck generously shared their experiences and ideas. Use them to make sure your 2026 training efforts position your team to become the “triple threat” auditors your organization needs. 

How Proactive Engagement, Specificity, and Resilience Can Help You Get an Internal Audit Job in 2025. Anyone looking for an Internal Audit leadership role in today’s job market will readily tell you: It ain’t easy getting noticed — or even getting a response. That’s why I was so impressed by the game-changing approach one Collective member and Head of Internal Audit used to find his new role. By getting specific about where he wanted to work, engaging daily with his target organizations, and balancing persistence, consistency, resilience, and realism, he landed his dream job in 2025. Whether you’re on the hunt now or just banking ideas for the future, his tips offer some solid tactical inspiration.

Our Mission: Serving Individual Practitioners and Teams

The Internal Audit Collective’s mission is different. We’re not working for the Internal Audit industry — we’re working for the success of every individual practitioner and team. 

Sure, that ultimately strengthens the overall profession. 

But it starts by listening to you and your peers, striving to answer your most pressing questions, and creating paths and platforms for auditors to share their problems, solutions, innovations, and insights. 

That’s why you’ll find us daily dorking out about the best ways to carry out an audit, integrate analytics or Gen AI, or elevate our teams’ skills or reputations.  

That’s what helps individuals and teams increase their impact.

So take this list. Identify different leaders on your team to read each article, identify the most relevant ideas and approaches, and present them for your consideration — and take action on them in 2026. 

Looking for more ideas in any of these areas? Join the Internal Audit Collective. Our community of 800+ high-performing Internal Auditors is — and always will be — our most impactful resource. 

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