Successful Internal Audit – Next Level Auditing with ARC HIANCA*
The ARC Heuristic Intuition Assessment, Negotiation and Coaching Approach (ARC HIANCA) is an approach that enables internal auditors to understand and react to the current pain points and challenges of business counterparts more effectively than ever before. Participants learn how to monitor and adjust language, behavior and communication strategy, which influences the acceptance of their messages. ARC HIANCA enables internal auditors to manage stakeholders while maintaining the balance of power. (Please note that we do not use any NLP techniques.)
Disappointment can arise quickly when findings, risk assessments and recommendations are not accepted because business counterparts see things differently. In fact, it is generally accepted today that facts, figures and logic alone will not necessarily convince someone to agree or take action. One key reason is that there is no direct interface between the brain areas responsible for logic, thinking, and language, and those areas that are the foundation of behavior and decision-making. Therefore, the real fault lies in the lack of knowledge about the ingredients necessary to be successful in convincing others.
The key objective of the ARC HIANCA training is to clearly understand the mechanics of behavior and decision-making from a brain research perspective. The major benefit of this training is not only better communication and team skills, but also learning how to win the acceptance of others and establish excellent working relationships.
This training is one of the main drivers that contribute to high-performance audit teams: strong, self-confident auditors with excellent relationship-building and communication skills, whether they are communicating with business counterparts or within the audit team.
This training is offered at two levels: for the management team of Corporate Audit, and for audit team members.
- For Audit Executive Management
The training is tailored to audit management, with a focus on understanding the point of view of senior business counterparts and how to communicate with strategic stakeholders, including senior management and the Board. Stakeholder’s needs, effectiveness of relationships, and the role of Internal Audit and Audit executives are examined.
- For Audit Team Members and Operational Audit Leaders
Very often, internal auditors may experience push back, lack of cooperation and even aggression from some business counterparts. ARC HIANCA helps to prevent and deal with such situations before they result in conflict. In addition, the training offers internal auditors the opportunity to understand the different roles of management, e.g. typical behavior concepts in leadership, the manager as expert, doctor or coach. Participants will learn the pros and cons of each role and resulting impact on their own behavior.
Ultimately, participants become more comfortable and skilled at persuading and influencing no matter their hierarchical perspective. Follow-up group web-coaching sessions may take place two to three months after the workshop so that participants may ask questions and get feedback on current audit communication challenges.
*ARC-HIANCA is the intellectual property of the Audit Research Center 
