I was one year into my role as Director and CAE when my manager told me that our company has never had a Vice President for Internal Audit, nor any plans to promote any Internal Auditor to that level.

It was a bit humbling to hear, but I was still early in my career and was focused more on obtaining the experiences than the title.

Unfortunately, this situation is common in many organizations - CAEs often lack the same level of executive status as other leaders in the organization.

For those in the CAE seat for 5 or 10 or more years, this can be a difficult pill to swallow. 

Being in your late 30s and early 40s, with aspirations to work for your company for a long time, but in a position to likely never be promoted again? It may be hard to keep the same motivation to work as hard year after year.

So is it possible for the CAE to become a VP in an organization that has not traditionally had a Vice President? 

It is, but it generally happens for factors outside of the CAE control. I’ve seen this happen in two instances:

1. The company continues to grow to a Fortune 500 sized company, and recalibrates all of the executive roles and titles. But while the CAE may still have a different title, they still have the problem of not being on the same level as other department heads.

2. The company experienced a black swan event, or the SOX program has significant issues and the CFO perceives the only way of solving these problems is to hire a more qualified CAE.

That said, I do believe there is an opportunity to break Internal Audit’s cement ceiling, but not to sugarcoat it, it won’t be easy.

In the short-term, I would focus less on trying to get a bigger title, and more on the impact I am providing to my organization.

Get Involved with Special Projects

To do this, I would scrutinize my team’s work to date. Are we just calling balls and strikes in our audit projects? Or are we providing meaningful feedback on relevant topics that are being discussed by the highest levels of our organization.

If we are not involved in any “special projects” or initiatives that are going on at our company, I would first make it my team's north star to do so.  

If I received pushback, I would offer my team to do the most mundane roles to ensure we can get involved. There’s always grunt work to do in these types of projects. And then we would work our tail off to overdeliver and build a reputation that our team should be involved in these types of special projects on a go-forward basis.

Fix Internal Audit’s Reputation

I would then work to recreate my team’s reputation in our organization. I would scrutinize our current deliverables and the non-negotiable work my team needs to perform with the goal of being world class. 

I would go on a listening tour to get feedback from our stakeholders, and then network my tail off within the Internal Audit community to find examples of “what great looks like” to address these feedback.

I would have the mindset that my non-negotiable work and current deliverables are the key to driving my team’s success forward. I would not try to minimize this work, and focus on other tasks or projects that may position Internal Audit to be well-received.

At the same time, I work to have our team be seen as serving a higher purpose by creating a slogan that aligns with our mission and vision statements and communicating it internally and externally often. 

I would allocate more of my team’s resources to being more proactive by providing training and coaching on risk management and internal control activities, and ratchet back detective audit projects. I would encourage my team to each volunteer for one or two Employee Resource Groupss in our company, and provide them more time to network within our organization.

Strategically Network within the Business

Finally, I would be strategic when networking with business executives of my company, with the intent to build a coalition of supporters amongst other Vice Presidents. 

In order to break through this perceived ceiling for Internal Audit, I will appreciate the fact that I will not be able to do it alone, and will need the support of others to successfully carry this out. 

 This will not be easy to accomplish, however, if you as a CAE were successful in re-aligning your work to more topical areas, and rebrand your department, this should help.

All that being said, many CAEs could be successful carrying out these initiatives and still find them with the same title. Changing the culture of how Internal Audit is perceived is hard to do.

BUT, there are silver linings for those who follow this approach, but still fall short of becoming a more senior executive.

First, they will have positioned themselves much better to receive more budget for consulting spend, headcount, or technology if and when they were to ask for it. 

If your team has a reputation for providing value, it's a lot easier for the CFO to justify more spend for your team than promoting it’s CAE.

Second, you’ll have a new set of work experiences and successes. Forward-thinking CAEs who push the boundaries of what’s possible will spend more time marketing and selling Internal Audit and building more relationships in the business, and the areas of their Internal Audit team’s focus will differ from just the traditional Financial, Operations, and IT audit focus areas. 

And finally, you will have made a significant impact. You may not have the title, but taking this approach may make it easier to gain the respect from other leaders in your organization, opening doors for more interesting projects to perform, and to continue to enable positive change with the resources allocated to you.

In 2025, my hope is that more Internal Audit and SOX leaders will strive for greatness. And for those that do, I’m here if you need me. You got this.