Why “Trusted Advisor” Will Become Internal Audit’s Entire Value Proposition: Excerpt from Richard Chambers’ Latest Book

Our profession faces an unavoidable existential question: When machines provide assurance, what will distinguish the human internal auditor?

In my latest book, Trusted Advisors: The Human Edge in the World of AI (3rd Edition), I provide my perspectives on that question. In the book’s first edition, Trusted Advisors: Key Attributes of Outstanding Internal Auditors (2017), I identified and defined what I viewed as the attributes of outstanding internal auditors capable of earning and sustaining trust and delivering lasting value to their organizations. In the decade since, our world and workplaces have been transformed by rapid technological disruption, sustained macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility, expanding risks, and a global pandemic — and yet, the characteristics that differentiate outstanding internal auditors remain remarkably timeless.

What has changed is the environment in which these trusted advisors must deliver and sustain value. That includes how stakeholders define value, timeliness, strategic priorities, and how their trust can be earned and sustained. But more importantly, AI is fundamentally altering how we execute our mission, and what we audit and provide advice on. Some even believe that AI presents an existential threat to internal audit itself. With four new chapters and updates throughout, the new edition of Trusted Advisors offers an in-depth look at these changes and how internal auditors must sharpen their “human edge” in response. The excerpt below is from Chapter 2, “How AI is Altering Internal Audit.”

Internal Auditing Today

Assessing where internal auditing stands in the Permacrisis Era is difficult. Some innovators and leaders have already shown that internal audit can use AI, innovation, and collaboration to deliver more advanced assurance and advisory services. But those examples remain the exception. Most internal audit functions are still not ready.

Why Readiness Remains a Concern

I recently wrote about five barriers slowing AI adoption in internal audit, and they remain relevant today:

1. Lack of in-house expertise

2. Limited understanding of AI capabilities

3. Concern about data privacy and security

4. Executive leadership is not prioritizing AI

5. Taking a wait-and-see approach

None of these barriers is insurmountable. Yet conversations with other thought leaders and subject-matter experts confirm my concern that the profession is not moving quickly enough to meet the moment.

Charles King, a partner with KPMG’s advisory services, has closely followed the role of technology in internal audit for much of the past decade. In particular, he has spoken with dozens, if not hundreds, of clients about AI over the past three years. His assessment of the profession’s readiness is both astute and concerning. “The profession has not yet come to grips with the transformational potential of AI — and that should worry us,” King said.

Based on his client interactions, King believes many organizations are considering AI or experimenting with it, but few have created meaningful strategies for adoption, adaptation, and innovation. He also sees a troubling divide. “We’re no longer looking at a single bell curve of adoption,” he said. “The curve has split — there are leaders, and there are laggards. Some teams think they’re leading because they’re experimenting. Others are actually building the future.”

An Existential Inflection Point

Tom McLeod, a longtime risk consultant and former chief risk officer and CAE, is another leading voice in the internal audit space. He believes AI has brought the profession to an existential inflection point. “This is not a once-in-a-career moment; it is a once-in-the-history-of-the-profession moment,” he said.

AI has the power to fundamentally change internal audit’s currency in the marketplace. The traditional value assigned to internal auditing (assurance and advisory services over risk management, governance, and control) may soon fall largely into the realm of AI-enabled automation, McLeod said. What must evolve from that shift is a clearer definition of internal audit’s value as trusted advisors who help organizations make sense of AI outputs.

“Trusted advisor is no longer a label. It is the entire value proposition,” he said.

AI will ultimately redefine all professions to some extent. From an internal audit perspective, McLeod believes that means a fundamental deconstruction of what the profession was built on. “If machines can provide assurance, we must redefine why humans are needed at all,” he said.

One of the profession’s biggest challenges may be that trust in technology is at an all-time high, particularly among digital natives who will make up future generations of internal auditors and stakeholders. “Humans trust machines instinctively — and that is a risk we have not yet learned to manage,” McLeod said. The future internal auditor must not merely analyze AI outputs; they must learn to challenge them. “We are moving from ‘trust but verify’ to ‘do not trust until verified.’”

What’s Next?

The simple answer is dramatic but true: internal audit must evolve or face a slow demise. One of the barriers cited earlier, the wait-and-see approach, has historically given practitioners a measure of comfort. As a profession, we are risk-averse, which is understandable given that our mission is largely to caution others about the dangers of unchecked risk. But in the current environment, that fallback position could become the profession’s undoing.

The Risk of Waiting

When internal auditors procrastinate or decline to adopt AI, they do not avoid risk, they create it. The consequences include slower insight, reduced risk coverage, and, most importantly, growing misalignment with what boards and executives need and expect.

Internal audit functions that avoid AI will struggle to address burgeoning risks and to process the volume and complexity of data their organizations generate. Worse, they will struggle to deliver assurance in a volatile environment where timeliness increasingly means in real time.

From Reports to Signals

McLeod and King both believe future internal auditors will rely on AI to help sense changes in risk as they happen and help their organizations respond quickly. “The audit of the future won’t be a report; it will be a signal,” King said. “Internal audit will shift from testing controls to monitoring the pulse of the business.”

Similarly, McLeod believes internal audit can distinguish itself by helping executive management and boards interpret, understand, and test AI output. As agentic AI takes on more of the audit itself, planning tests, pulling evidence, and flagging exceptions without waiting to be asked, assurance will become increasingly automated and machine-enabled. But trust, real judgment, context, courage, and the willingness to intervene will still have to be earned.

“Audit is no longer about telling people what they should know; it is about helping them decide what to believe,” he said. “The machine can produce answers. The human must determine whether they matter.”

The remainder of Chapter 2 offers actionable short-term guidance in the form of “Ten Steps to Avoid Irrelevance.” But it also emphasizes my longer-term perspective on why AI ultimately won’t render internal auditors irrelevant — that is, if the profession commits to honing its human edge and becoming the trusted advisors organizations urgently need. In short, I genuinely believe that AI will help unlock critical capacity and spark motivation for internal auditors to operate at the higher, more strategic level the profession has long sought: the elusive "trusted advisor” status. Our human superpowers are the strategic assets and bedrock foundation that will define our value as AI continues transforming the global business landscape.

If you’re interested in hearing more, join me at a special session dedicated to the topic at Optro’s CRX 2026 conference. In-person attendees will get a free copy of the book, but you can also join virtually and order your copy. Either way, register for CRX today.