Chairing for assurance
Audit committees, chairing and learning from failure.
A half day on chairing for assurance: internal audit, the audit committee, chairing committees and public meetings, minutes and actions, three capstone cases, learning from failure and member-officer relationships.
- Level
- Explore
- Learning time
- 5 hours 30 minutes
- Where
- Serving the public
- Price
- £129
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Audit and scrutiny committee chairs and members, board members and senior officers in councils, the NHS, housing and charities
Overview
Committees that run nothing still see across the whole organisation. This second half of Holding to account opens with the Global Internal Audit Standards and the Slough Borough Council case, then the audit committee itself, drawing on CIPFA and the lessons of Croydon and Brick by Brick. Chairing committees and public meetings follows, with the Pwyllgor of Mind Cymru as a Welsh example, then minutes, action logs and reviewing yourself. A capstone reads Handforth Parish Council, HBOS and Attlee's Cabinet. Learning from failure draws on Syed, Edmondson, Reason's Swiss cheese model, Dekker's just culture and NHS England's Patient Safety Incident Response Framework, closing with member-officer relationships.
Aims
The intention is to develop chairs and committee members who insist on evidence before trust: holding internal audit and agreed actions to account, chairing for the decision the room must live with, and building learning systems that turn complaints and failures into lasting change.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Assess the independence of an internal audit function, and test whether actions marked complete have actually been implemented.
- Apply lessons from Handforth, HBOS and Attlee's Cabinet to chair for the decision the room will have to live with.
- Explain why a just culture is not a no blame culture, and plan board reporting on complaints that shows what has changed.
What you'll develop
Across this Explore, you will develop the ability to:
- Describe the structure of the Global Internal Audit Standards and the role they give the board or audit committee in governing internal audit.
- Explain the core functions of an audit committee and why its independence from management is its greatest asset.
- Distinguish how the chairing of audit, scrutiny, planning, remuneration and stakeholder committees should differ according to their purpose.
- Explain the four jobs that minutes do and identify what good minutes should contain, including brief evidence of challenge.
- Distinguish Edmondson's basic, complex and intelligent failures and choose a proportionate leadership response to each.
- Apply the four habits of useful learning reviews and the four aims of the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework to a complaint or incident in your own setting.
- Distinguish discretionary from prescribed activity, and transactional from transformational leadership, and explain how members and officers sit differently on each.
- Distinguish political from managerial leadership and explain where the two legitimately overlap.
Built from 9 modules.
5 hours 30 minutes of learning.
- 01Internal Audit: Standards, Independence and OpinionAudit and Assurance38 min
- 02The Audit CommitteeAudit and Assurance37 min
- 03Chairing Committees, Scrutiny and Public MeetingsChairing Meetings, Boards and Committees36 min
- 04After the Meeting: Minutes, Actions and Reviewing YourselfChairing Meetings, Boards and Committees32 min
- 05Applied Case Studies: CapstoneChairing Meetings, Boards and Committees33 min
- 06Learning from Failure: The TheoryComplaints, Ombudsmen and Learning from Failure37 min
- 07From Complaint to Change: Building a Learning SystemComplaints, Ombudsmen and Learning from Failure35 min
- 08Political LeadershipWorking in a Political Environment45 min
- 09Member-Officer RelationshipsWorking in a Political Environment41 min