Practice area · 08/08
Board reporting.
Findings the audit committee can act on. Three findings, not thirty — and a report the board measures by what gets fixed.
Findings the audit committee can act on. Three findings, not thirty — and a report the board measures by what gets fixed.
The audit committee meets four times a year. Use the time well.
The most common failure in audit committee reporting is volume. A 60-page deck with 28 findings and a heat map produces no decision. A four-page brief with three findings, named risks, and clear owners produces three.
Our practice is partly the report itself (template design, severity rating discipline, executive summary craft) and partly the rehearsal of the conversation — what gets said, what gets asked, what gets left for the executive session. The partner who runs the engagement is the partner who briefs the committee.
This is not a 'design a template' engagement. It is a craft engagement. We have written hundreds of audit committee reports, and the discipline is in what gets cut.
Executive summary format, severity scale, heat-map vocabulary, action-owner discipline.
Each finding written for a board member, not an auditor. Root cause, impact, action, owner, date.
Ratings that mean what they say — and that stop drifting upward over time.
What goes in the quarterly pack, what goes in the annual report, what triggers an extraordinary briefing.
The 12-minute version of the 40-page report. Practiced, sharpened, timed.
Pre-meeting alignment with the committee chair on what needs airtime — and what can be sent in the read-ahead.
Last four committee packs reviewed; committee members interviewed.
New template, new severity scale, new executive summary discipline.
Next pack assembled in the new format; partner present for the briefing.
Ongoing review of the pack, the briefing, and the action-tracking discipline.
Enterprise Risk · Board Advisory
Patricio has briefed audit committees and boards across a career as a senior risk and audit executive in financial services. He has a particular allergy to heat maps that have stopped meaning anything. Member of The National Executive Roundtable.
We do not ghostwrite reports for management to present as their own. The byline matters; the source of the judgment matters more.