Ep 3: The Bright Side of Auditing: Jami's Perspective

Welcome to Inspiring Women in Audit, the only podcast celebrating the achievements and journeys of women in the internal audit industry. In each episode, we spotlight the extraordinary stories, insights and expertise of these dynamic professionals. Our aim is to amplify their voices, inspiring a new generation of women auditors to share their knowledge, experiences and unique perspectives. Remember to check our show notes for links to our social media channels and to subscribe to the Inspiring Women in Audit newsletter. This podcast is brought to you by i4 Global Results Limited the audit communication experts dedicated to transforming your audit reporting and your audit results through communication, optimization and collaboration. Now let's dive in to this episode of Inspiring Women in Audit.

Welcome everyone to Inspiring Women in Audit, the podcast dedicated to empowering and uplifting women in the internal audit industry. I'm your host, Tracy Marquardt, and I'm excited today to have my very special guest, Jamie Schein with me. Now let me tell you a little bit about Jamie. Jamie is the corporate and IT audit manager at KwikTrip in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She has a background in external audit and is experienced in developing and teaching audit communications training programs, public speaking, risk assessment, erm, and planning, performing and managing financial, IT and operational audits. Jamie is a volunteer for the iia, both the local and global level, and she's authored several articles and regularly contributes to industry conferences. Number one, Jamie, I want to thank you for all your efforts in serving the internal audit community. I think it's so commendable and it's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on an early episode of my new podcast series. And welcome to Inspiring Women in On it.

Thanks so much, Tracy. I feel super honored to be here and I'm excited to chat with you about some of our passions today.

Awesome. That's great. Well, you know, this is the second time we've met on a podcast. The first time being in the Audit Room, which I was a co host of for two years. And I know you went to college for theater and acting and you ended up graduating with an accounting degree. Now many of us might think these are two polar opposite careers, and I know you have some thoughts on that, so I thought, I was wondering if you could share those. And then my. My underlying question is, what drove you to take that first accounting course?

It's a great question. My answer to that is that it was required, so probably right. I hated accounting at first. So when I first took an accounting course, I started out as a theater major. Growing up, I had always done theater. I'd even done some professional theater as a Child. I loved it. I was going to be an actress, and then I was like, I'm going to run my own theater company. This is the dream. So when I went to college, I went to school as a theater major. And once I was taking the classes, I realized that it was taking something that I had always loved, that had been my hobby, and it was putting so much structure to it that it wasn't as much fun anymore. And so I said, I'm going to go to school for business admin, and then I'm going to learn how to run a theater company, because that's really the dream. So as a business admin major, I had to take an accounting class, and I hated it. I was like, this is not how my brain works. This is terrible debit and credit and organization. And I'm pretty right brained, so it was horrible. And every time we had a test, I thought I failed the test. I was like, oh, that they would post the highest and lowest score, but not who got them. And I was like, that low score, that's going to be me. And I usually, I did have, you know, really good grades in that class, but I had to study and I had to work hard at it. So because I'm a glutton for punishment and because my brain didn't work that way, naturally, I thought I should start taking some accounting electives because this is just a great opportunity for me to develop a different, different way of thinking that I've never experienced before. So I just kept taking accounting electives, and then I pretty much had the credits to graduate with an accounting degree. So I went and like, my senior year, maybe it was second semester, my junior year, I went and talked to a professor and said, okay, I'm going to be an actress. So, like, not super concerned about this, but I'd love to have a backup plan because I was an idiot, you know, I was 20. But like, I need a backup plan. What's going to be the best backup plan for me? And he said, well, an accounting degree is a. Is a great opportunity. You'll have lots of job opportunities. And I was like, great, backup plan, perfect. So that's how I ended up with a degree in accounting. And I never expected to fall into this profession and to love it as much as I do.

I think that's an amazing story. And it resonates for me because I took my first accounting class. I was in grade 10, and I took a grade 11 accounting course, and I aced it. And I thought, this is it. Now I Know what I'm going to do? Right? The whole world needs accountants. Everybody needs an accountant. So I'm going to go and study, you know, accountancy, chartered accountancy. And that's what I did. And look where I am now. My goodness. So.

And that's such a journey into, you know, everything that you're doing now with the teaching and the training and being this expert at communications. That's so cool.

Well, I think, I think accounting or having a CPA or having a CIA or whatever it is that is, you know, your jam, it really does open doors for you. And that's what I find is that having the CA which we now call CPA here in Canada, it was like having a passport in my pocket that I could pull out and travel anywhere in the world, get a visa into the United States to work there. I mean it's just, it's. And it's really fulfilling. And thank goodness I'm an audit, not accounting. Now I can do accounting, but I'd rather be an auditor. It's like M I D DNA and I'm sure it's in your DNA as well.

Yes, I love audit. I stumbled into it, but I'm so grateful that I did.

Super. Now are there similarities between accounting and acting?

I don't know about accounting and acting. There's definitely similarities between audit and acting.

Okay, tell me about those.

So when you think about acting, the first thing that you start off with is, is what your character wants. You're trying to figure out what do they want, what are they trying to get. And my acting coach when I was a little kid, so drilled into me would make us go through every line in the script and figure out what your character's trying to get. And you learn back then there's no bad characters. Right? Your character sees themselves as the hero of their story. So you could be playing this horribly evil person, but you have to get into that mindset of what are they trying to achieve. So you're thinking of everything in terms of their goals. And I think it's really kind of the same thing. For audit, right? We have to start with a basic foundation of understanding our clients goals. I'm not going to be a very good auditor if all I'm going in is looking at a checklist. Well, here's the criteria. Did you meet the criteria? Did you follow the policy? It's not adding value to anyone for the most part. And so I think we have to go in as auditors and try to understand first of all, what's my company Trying to achieve what are their strategic objectives. And then every business unit that I work with, I need to understand what does that director care about? How do they define success? What are they worried about? And that's going to help me customize the work that we do to bring more value, to identify what are the risks that could prevent this from happening. And that tailored approach, I think, is really where I see that, that melding, I guess, of the two worlds where they're really very similar, all of it is kind of rooted in psychology in a way. You're trying to figure out what is the goal, what do they care about, and then how do we help them be successful.

I think that's fantastic. It's really, you know, putting yourself in their shoes and really understanding what they want to do. And I find as simple as those concepts are, not every auditor has that mindset yet. So hopefully when they listen, they will start to develop that mindset, if they haven't already. So thank you. Now, I love listening to you and love interviewing you because I feel like positivity just radiates from you. And to support that, I had a peek at your recommend recommendations today on LinkedIn, and someone you've worked with mentioned your effervescent personality, which I thought was brilliant wording. Right. Every word matters. I love it. So how does your positive mindset affect your success as an internal auditor?

Well, first of all, thank you so much for those kind words. I think that we talk a lot at my company about strength finders or about our biggest strengths. And we all do the strength finders assessment. Positivity is one of my top five. And I think that it's definitely been helpful to me as an auditor because even though I'm pretty realistic, I think I'm able to see the negative pretty easily as well. But I also do tend to see the good in every situation, in every person. And so I come at my audits from a mindset of the people I'm working with. They're trying to do the right thing for my company. They're trying to succeed operationally, and they care. And so when I go about it in that mindset, then I think that I'm able to get a little bit more buy in, hopefully, because I'm not just looking to find the bad, I'm looking to find what's there. And sometimes it's bad, and a lot of times it's good. And so we're able to point out the positive things that they're doing as well. Now, I do always say Our biggest strengths are also sometimes our biggest weaknesses. And that's very much true for me. Positivity is one of my biggest strengths. It also can be one of my biggest weaknesses when it's in excess. So I'm on a journey right now. I've actually been seeking out people and asking them for critical feedback and just saying, hey, you worked with me. I want to know what's not working. I want to know what can I do better? What should I be working on? What are my blind spots? Because I don't know what they are. And something that I heard recently from someone I respect and admire so much was, you're too positive and you're too much of a cheerleader. And I really took that to heart. I was like, this is great feedback. Thank you so much for sharing that. Because even though it can be a strength and it can make you successful in excess, it can actually be a detriment to me. So I have to be really careful about it as well.

That's interesting. So finding maybe a little tiny bit more balance, I wouldn't want you to change your positivity too much, to be honest, because it's. It's infectious and I think we need more of it. So the more people see your positivity, I think, you know, it's just the ripple effect, which I think is. Is an amazing thing. So don't change too much is what. Okay. I want to. Because you talked a little bit about Quick Trip, and every time I hear you talk about your employer, I feel like I want to apply for a job there. It's so. Yeah, a great place to work. So what makes it so special? Is it the corporate culture? It's positive and supportive? Or, you know, I'm inferring that from the things I've heard you talk about. So what is it exactly?

I would say it's a secret sauce. Right. Quick Trip is a great place to work. And it all starts with. It starts from the ground up and the top down. Our CEO is so passionate about the employees, and the company's mission is literally to enable our employees to grow and succeed. So we're a company that exists for the employees and not a company that just exists to make money for shareholders. Right. So I love that we are partially employee owned, and there's a lot of great benefits, a lot of great bonuses for the employees. But at the end of the day, I think everyone is bought into. We're working together to achieve something great. We're working together to support the stores. Something that I really Love about our corporate culture is that we all know that we exist to support the store employees. Our founder always says, and I walk past this quote on the wall when I walk in every day, if you're not taking care of our customers, you better be taking care of the people who are. And so we really take that to heart. And I think that that servant mindness is so critical to our success as a company that it really is all about taking care of the customer and that it's about taking care of our store employees. And I think sometimes companies, they reverse that and they worry more about taking care of the bottom line. If you're taking care of your customers, bottom line is going to take care of itself. It's definitely a work hard, play hard culture. We're all very passionate about what we do. We care about it. Our CEO and our leadership impresses on us every day the importance of showing up and taking care of our store employees because they're our priority at corporate. We need to be taking care of them. And I think we all feel the weight of that, that there are tens of thousands of families that rely upon us to take care of them. And then, you know, of course, our customers as well. So I think that's something that makes us special as well. Something else that I love about our culture is it's very direct feedback is not seen as a negative thing. I personally love direct feedback. If you have a problem with me, tell me you have a problem with me. That's great, because then I can address it. And so I love that our culture is all about excellence, one of our core values. And I would say that you could probably ask any store employee, any corporate employee, and they could recite the core values for you, because they're not just something on the wall. They're something that we live by. But one of our core values is never be satisfied. So something that I love as well, that it's. It's a culture where it's okay to give critical feedback in a very direct way because everyone knows that it's happening because you care.

Good. That's great. It sounds fantastic. Maybe I'll get to come down and see you down there one day.

I would love it. I'll give you. I'll give you an office tour.

That'd be great. That'd be great. It's just really heartwarming to hear about the core values that everybody knows. The core values that you're serving your employees who serve your customers. I find that refreshing these days. And I know you're Passionate about, erm. So I wanted to pick your brain a little bit on that subject. Why is it important for auditors to be part of ERM discussions? Because they don't hear hear that very often. And can you share a specific example where audit's involvement has had significant impact on the business?

That's a great question. So I can't give you a specific example because of confidentiality.

Right.

But I can tell you that something that we've seen is our executive leadership team and even mid management, they're talking so much about risk with each other and I love that. And I'm not saying that that didn't happen before, but I think since our formal ERM program has launched, I'm seeing more of that. I'm seeing that they're doing such a great job of having these very humble and open conversations, and I think that's hard to do. Right. I think at a lot of companies it would be hard for executives to get in a room and say, here's my vulnerabilities. Here are the things that we don't have fully under control. Right. That's like. That's scary. It's scary to be that vulnerable. And so I've seen this increased level of vulnerability in our leaders, where they're getting in a room with each other and they're saying, here are the things that I'm concerned about. What are you concerned about? Here are the things that I'm wondering if we have this fully covered, what are you guys doing here? What are we doing here? And I think it's just started really great communications about, erm, where we're seeing this really great level of vulnerability and great level of communication where they're working together in the past. It's not that they weren't working together by any means. I think they've always had great communications, but I think sometimes it's hard to communicate proactively about risk across business lines unless you're being intentional about it. Right. Everyone is trying to do the right thing for the company and a lot of that means running your business unit with excellence. And so sometimes we forget to check in with these other business units who are also mitigating the same risk, facing the same risk. So we've just seen such enhanced lines of communication through erm, and I love that.

It's about collaboration, isn't it? Collaborating together to get a better outcome for the business and for the employees and eventually for the customers as well. So I love that 100%. Well, I think that's a great initiative. And hopefully you'll get some pings on LinkedIn for auditors asking you about that, because I think it's a super topic to explore in a little more depth. And I wanted to turn next to my favorite topic in the world, which, you know, what is it is audit reporting. And I. I'm very passionate and opinionated on this subject. And I know that, you know, traditional reports have typically focused on the negative and even the IIA has suggested that we talk about the positives. So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit without breaking any confidentiality about how you might incorporate positives into your audit reports and where that might be.

Definitely. You know, I think I've actually seen, just from some of the benchmarking that I've done, I've seen fewer auditors incorporating positives recently because we're trying to make our reporting so lean, which is good, right? We want lean reporting, but sometimes the positives are what get cut. And I think we have to make room for both. So our report structure, and I'm not saying that everyone should copy it by any means or that it's perfect, but in our report structure we have our conclusion paragraph. And so we'll incorporate some of the positives in there, but we also have a section where we'll talk about positive things or improvements that we've seen since the last audit. Maybe it's a new initiative that they put in place, maybe it's some new efficiencies where they automated their reporting. But if we've seen something, we like to call it out and provide some positive assurance that these are the things that are going really well. I think that serves multiple purposes. First of all, if I were to get an audit report, how demoralizing would it be to just get a list of everything that I'm doing wrong? Right. You want a balanced approach. I also think that it serves our audit committee a lot better and our senior leadership team. If they can see the really good things as well as the opportunities for improvement, it helps them understand what's actually going on in this business unit. If you just see a list of faults or findings, then you're going to assume the worst when actually this business unit might be doing so well. And there's just tiny little things that are opportunities to be fine tuned. So I think having that section has been really helpful where we can call out some positive changes since the last time that we did the audit.

And you find that the recipients of the reports respond really well to that.

You know, I don't Know, if I've ever gotten direct feedback on it, nobody's ever come to me and said, we hate that section with all the things we're doing.

Great.

I'm gonna say I like it, but.

Yeah, because I think for some audit shops, I see a sentence in the report, and it feels like a throwaway that says, you know, we want to thank the oddity, they say, or the audit client for their very, you know, extreme cooperation. And I always feel like that is a sentence that might be added in because they weren't that cooperative or it was a very difficult experience. So they're trying to smooth things over a little bit. I think. Give credit where credit is due. Right. If they helped out, but. Or if they were very cooperative. But I also think that the positive things in. In the report should really reflect something positive and be valuable and not. Not any of these throwaway statements, because it. It is a touchy subject for some audit shops. So. But let's be. Let's be honest and let's give credit where credit is due. Everyone is a human being, like you said. Everyone's working hard. Everyone's trying to get a great result for the business. So give credit where credit is due. But anyway, I appreciate your thoughts on that. We could do a whole nother session on audit reporting, because I love that topic so much. But with. We'll carry on. Because I want to ask you about your experience as a volunteer with the iia. You've been doing that for, gosh, over a decade. Right. And can you tell us about what you're currently involved in and what drives you to contribute your time in this way?

Definitely. So I'm currently the chapter president for the IIA Tulsa Chapter, and I love it. I spent four years on Chapter Relations Committee for North America, and I loved doing that. I had so much fun. I was supporting eight chapters. And so it was just so fun to get to work with all the chapter leaders, get to represent their perspectives and make sure that their voices were heard. That was an absolute blast. And then when I rolled off of that committee after four years, now I am on the Institute Relations Committee, which is similar, but it's at the global level. And so one of the coolest things for me with that has been getting to know people from literally all over the world. I love getting to hear their perspectives. It challenges me so much. I'm learning so much from them because culturally, we're all so different. And so some of the things that I observed them doing, it's helped me realize a lot. Some of the things that I do by default because of my culture. And not that those things are wrong and. But for an example, I'm an activator. And I think part of that is the American culture. Part of it is I'm just an extra activator. That's also one of my top five and strength finders. And so some of the other cultures that I work with, they're more deliberate. Or some of the cultures that I work with, I love this. They'll spend time really showing honor to each other. And so I've gotten to learn so much about different cultures and. But I've also gotten to learn from these different cultures and learn from these incredibly diverse and intelligent and just dynamic people that are coming together from all over the globe and volunteering their time.

I think it's a fantastic experience, no matter what association that one chooses to volunteer for. Because, you know, I volunteered for several doing different things. You volunteered for several as well. What do you think you get out of it? If I could be so bold to ask that.

Oh, I feel like I get more out of it than I give back to it. Most of the time. I love it. For me, I'm an extrovert. Surprise, surprise. And I love building the relationships. And I've also always been obsessed with learning about other cultures, learning about different parts of the world. And so for me, getting to meet people and getting to know people from all over the world has been incredibly rewarding. It's also been a great growth opportunity for me of getting to network with people, getting to develop some leadership skills, working on some task force. But also it's been a great growth opportunity for me in getting to work on some different things, work on some different projects that maybe I'm not working on in my job. So developing some new skills has been super fun. The networking has been so valuable to me. I would say the networking has probably been the biggest benefit to me because my audit shop is fairly small. And I'm sometimes a little bit jealous of the auditors graduating from college now because they're graduating with all of this experience already and things like data analytics and understanding machine learning and AI and all this new technology. And so for me, having these networks across now across the globe, but across North America, even at the local chapter level, it's helpful that I can pick up the phone and say, hey, what are you doing in this space? This is what our shop is doing. But how are you handling it? I can't tell you how valuable that was. Especially during COVID I reached out to so many friends. And I was like, what are you guys doing right now? What are you auditing? How are you pivoting? And so those relationships are invaluable, not just from a personal standpoint, even though certainly I've grown from them personally, but even from making me a better auditor.

That's fantastic. And I think, you know, you said you're in a small audit shop. I mean, we don't have all the answers and that's what community is for. So for everyone out there, you know, listening, you know, use LinkedIn, go to your association meetings, you know, volunteer where you can in whatever association you would like to and just build those relationships because they help us all in this future. That's what, you know, the beauty of networking is.

So I think people think of networking as a dirty word. Sometimes I hear people say networking. Well, I don't really want to network. It feels weird or it feels awkward or they think it's selfish. They think networking is about finding people that you can get something from. And it's been really, really educational to me, I guess to see that networking is, it's a two way street. It's finding out what you can give back and then also there are times that you're going to gain from it. And so I think we have to approach networking a little bit differently.

I think so too. I totally agree with you. It's, you know, for, for, for me it's a, it's a balancing act too, but it's about serving. So I do a lot of things on LinkedIn and I'm offering free knowledge, whatever you want to call it. I think it's part of being an active member of the community. It's, it's our responsibility to lift others. I mean, that's one of the reasons for the podcast, right? It's just, I hope, part of what we do and it becomes that kind of mindset for more and more people out there. Well, listen, so we're coming to a last, last of the few questions and you mentioned, you know, people at college having more knowledge than maybe we did when we were kind of at that level. And I'm wondering what advice that you would give college level women who are looking for a satisfaction and career where they can make a difference, or maybe women who are not in an audit role right now and feel like they want to do something to make a difference or they want more for themselves. Would you recommend internal audit and what would you say to them?

I would recommend internal audit as a career. You know, I don't want to say internal audit's the career for everyone because I think everyone has to figure out what makes them happy and what makes them sick. But for me, it's certainly been a really rewarding career and certainly for you as well, and for really everyone that I talk to in Internal Audit, I don't tend to see people in internal audit who have bad experiences with it. It's a rewarding career because you're getting to see every area of the business. So I don't think that in college you need to commit to the next 50 years of your life. Right. I think that it's a great time to understand. Let's try some things. Let's figure out what I want to do. And for me, when I was in college, well, I originally planned to go work for a theater company, so obviously my plan shifted a little bit. But going into external audit was a great path for me because I was able to see so many different industries, so many different companies, just understanding how different the cultures were at different companies. And that was really neat for me. But then going into internal audit has been incredibly helpful as well, because I get to see every area of the business, and I am constantly getting to learn. I'm constantly growing. Just when I think I figured something out, the technology changes. Just when I figured out something at IT auditing, I'm like, nope, that's different now. So I'm continuously getting to grow and getting to learn. Being an extrovert, I think it's a great option for me because I'm getting to talk to people a lot. I'm not just stuck in an office or cube by myself all day. I will say that there may be some people that that's not the right fit for. Right. If you are deeply, deeply introverted, if you want to sit in an office all day and not have interactions with other people, that's not bad. But internal on it might not be the right fit for you, but I think it's definitely a great career to explore. It's an opportunity to make a difference too, because you're getting to provide insights to your company that are going to help them be more successful. And who doesn't want that?

It's an opportunity to get out there and learn about all the other functions. Maybe you will be drawn to another function within the business or to another business entirely, but it's a great way to see everything, to dig in, to meet tons of people and to find out maybe where you really want to be in the end. But I do think it's a great, great stepping stone. I also think that once an auditor, always an auditor. And you'll take those skills with you no matter where you go in the business, right?

Definitely.

All right, what do you think are the most important qualities or skills for success today as an internal auditor?

I'm going to say critical thinking skills. You know, it's funny, I feel like the answer should be technical skills, but to me it's still soft skills. It's still those communication skills. Being able to sell your audit recommendations, being able to clearly and accurately communicate, being able to listen to your client, because if you're not listening to them, you're not going to get accurate information and your findings are just going to be a bunch of red tape. Critical thinking is huge. As internal auditors, I think in the past, I don't know how long ago, probably, I mean, 20 plus years ago, right. I have heard of internal auditors being able to go in their little checklist and you can teach just about anyone how to follow a checklist audit. But nowadays companies are getting away from that because it doesn't add the same kind of value. You have to be able to really understand what your company's trying to achieve. Then you have to be able to understand what are the risks that could get in the way of them achieving these objectives. And then identify these controls and then are they the right controls? Sometimes we've been looking for areas of over control. So being able to think critically is huge. Being able to work with people who think differently than you, even just being able to tailor your communication. And this is something I'm still learning. But being able to tailor your communication to different personality types is critical as an internal auditor, because I like to say that we're kind of like our company's doctors in a way. We have to give honest feedback. We have to speak truth to power. I'm sure that no doctor is like, I cannot wait to give that next cancer diagnosis. That sounds real fun for me. Right? And if, if they feel that way, they shouldn't be a doctor. They have to be able to give really hard news to people and deliver it with empathy. And for us, we have to have that same ability. So I think we have to have pretty high emotional intelligence where it's going to hurt our clients. If we're not giving them honest feedback, it's going to prevent them from being able to achieve their goals. So we have to have that boldness, that confidence and that empathy to be able to deliver real feedback to them. I think anyone can learn the technical skills. But we really need to have those communication skills. Now. That said, I also think that it would be great to have auditors who have those skills in data analytics, have those skills in cybersecurity, who understand technology. That's like the cherry on top to me that separates, you know, a really great auditor. But I think the basics, you have to be able to communicate, you have to have high emotional intelligence, you have to have empathy, you have to genuinely care about your clients.

Absolutely. I mean, I think that's a great list. You're preaching to the choir. You know, I mean, I love communicate, everything about communication. I think we can change the world with positive communication. And I think it's a super valuable skill for internal audits. So like you said, you can learn the technical skills. If everyone coming out of college today actually has more of those technical skills, that's fantastic. You can go out and get some certificates from various training organizations on these things as well. But learning empathy is tough. Right? Like it's. I think I, I personally believe empathy is a muscle that can be exercised and strengthened over time and become your skill and your superpower. But not everyone's born with the same empathy gene quality. Maybe, maybe I can say, but, but being able to see others perspectives and be open to others perspectives, I think it's just fabulous. And if listening is a superpower too, you're in a really good spot. Right. So, so fantastic. Listen, have you gotten any advice over your career where you. It's really stuck with you and you're like, wow, that's made a difference for me.

Absolutely. And it's hard to just pick one because there's so many. I've been blessed out.

Oh, no.

I was thinking about it earlier today and I think the one that has stuck with me the most, and I'm going to have to explain it a little bit because I don't think it violates the standard, but it's assume positive intent. I think sometimes as auditors, we immediately, when we see a finding, I think sometimes we assume negative intent. And I've fallen into that trap before where maybe I found accounting issues where people were accounting for something wrong and I assumed it was because they were trying to cook the books. I assumed they were trying to get away with something when actually maybe they should know or maybe that was the way the system was set up. And it was set up years ago and no one had really questioned it. Now, I'm not saying that we don't, we don't have professional skepticism. Right? Professional skepticism is Key. I'm not saying we don't look for red. Sorry. I don't think that we shouldn't be like looking for fraud red flags or anything like that. But if we find something that looks off or that's an issue, I think sometimes our personality types, we tend to assume the worst. So don't assume negative intent. It often, most of the time, like 95% of my audit recommendations are communication breakdowns where people are just trying to do the right thing for the company. They are trying to do the right thing for quick trip. And maybe something wasn't communicated to them or they didn't understand the importance of a control because that wasn't communicated, or it was a training issue. And so it's. I think it's important for us to go into these interactions assuming that they're trying to do the right thing. Because how different does it feel? Like, Tracy, you're amazing. So you'd never do it, but let's say you weren't performing a control. It's a completely different interaction for me to say, hey, Tracy, you're trying to get away with something to you, Are you trying to do the wrong thing? Or for me to say, hey, I know that you're trying to do the right thing for the company, and I've worked with you. I know that you care about the company. I did notice that this isn't happening anymore. Could you help me understand why what's going on here? I think it changes our interactions.

I think that's the key word is why. I think it's the best of all the question words. And I think it's just how we approach getting to that. Why? Because you can't approach it from the negative or you can approach it from a slightly more positive perspective. Okay, last question I have for you. What do you want your legacy to be to the audit community, maybe to even women in audit or future generations.

Of auditors, feels a little daunting right now. Like legacy. I feel like I'm still just learning so much and I'm still growing so much, Tracy. I don't feel like I've arrived, but I probably never will. Right. It's like I'm always growing. But I would want my legacy to be one of humility. I think that that's something that I think is so critical in business. Right. And being able to be vulnerable, being able to come to the table and have these vulnerable discussions, erm, is my passion, as I think we've talked about. And to me, I love getting to see my executives These incredibly brilliant, passionate, talented, experienced people. I love watching them come to the table with vulnerability and say, here's what's going on in the business. Here's kind of my dirty laundry. Right? I love that. And so I would want my legacy to be that of humility, of vulnerability, of working with my clients and saying, I don't know everything, but together, let's get to a better place together, let's take care of the company. I think the other legacy that I would want to have is just kind of what we preached at the beginning of focus on what your clients are trying to achieve. Don't follow a checklist. It's so easy to get into a trap of, especially now with things like, you know, generative AI. What are the risks for this process? Well, those might not be the risk for your company. And so I would want to leave a legacy, hopefully, of trying to really understand my business, trying to understand what are they trying to achieve? How does the business work? Something cool that Quick Trip does is we actually have or I actually got to go work in the stores for my first week on the job. And so what a great way for me to learn the business. Right? It was super hard, by the way. I don't think I would have passed training, but I was not good at it. But it gave me so much respect for our amazing store employees. So I want to leave a legacy of hopefully understanding the business, being humble, and then tailoring what we do to help our clients succeed.

That's fantastic. I know asking you the legacy question may seem like a bit early in your career to do that, but I feel like the contribution that you have made so far is tremendous and I just encourage you to keep doing what you're doing and keep sharing that positivity. And I thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You inspire me. You've inspired me from the moment I met you a couple of years ago, the first time we did the interview. And I'm glad you could join me today, so thank you very much.

Well, thanks, Tracy. It was great to be here and you're such an inspiration to me as well. So thank you. Mutual fan club.

There you go. Thanks. Thanks, Jamie.

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