PRODUCTIVITY AND TIME MANAGEMENT Lose focus every time a new email pops up? Control the chaos with Outlook email. you can control that your inbound emails! You can set your Outlook to send/receive in whatever time intervals you want. I set mine to 2-hours, so I can stay focused on whatever I am working on. […]

Mary Breslin, CFE, CIA President, Empower Audit In light of International Fraud Awareness Week, I wanted to take a look at why fraud awareness in every organization needs to specifically define what fraud is for your organization. Six weeks after the U.S. government bailed out AIG, the AIG executives held a weeklong retreat at a five-star […]

Mary Breslin, CFE, CIA President, Empower Audit When I was a teenager my mother was diagnosed with cancer and died two years later after battling the disease. My mother’s illness was heartbreaking to witness, but it was how quickly the idea of normal ceased to exist that was surprising. Having a clean home, clean clothing, […]

Mary Breslin, CFE, CIA President, Empower Audit Other than spiders, one of my greatest fears is hearing that I taught someone to commit fraud. One of the challenges auditors face is persuading management to implement preventive fraud controls without inadvertently teaching them how to commit the fraud. Unfortunately, sometimes we have to explain in great […]

Last week I taught a course on leveraging data analytics to detect fraud. I love teaching fraud courses and have had a decade-and-a-half love affair with data analytics — specifically what a mature analytics program can do for an organization. When teaching, my favorite moment is seeing the lightbulb go on for class participants when […]