I’m Jamie Ontiveros, a career auditor and life long learner.

Who am I?

Origin Midwest

I’m a career audit and risk professional originally from Saginaw, Michigan (USA). Saginaw is a small gritty Midwestern town in the middle of the rust belt, but that’s a different story. Not much additional to share about this timeframe now, but the grit and perseverance continue to define me.

Auditor

I started my career at MCI Worldcom not long before the fraud was uncovered in June of 2002 1. Even though I was an employee, I learned about the fraud mostly from the headlines. I had no idea who Cynthia Cooper was when I joined MCI Worldcom, but her story inspired and intrigued me2. That triggered my curiosity and I engaged with the externa auditors. I was able to work with the external auditors some, so I used the opportunity to share my interest in audit, and gather some career advice. My background was in Finance, not Accounting. I had not been working in Finance long, but audit became very interesting to me. One of the external auditors I spoke with suggested pursuing internal audit as a way into the profession. I researched it, and had a new job as an internal auditor just a few months later. Spoiler alert – I had no way of knowing during the summer of 2002 as a young analyst, that I would later meet Cynthia Cooper just this year in 2024! Amazing things to come!

Becoming an internal auditor was the best thing to happen in my career. I was fresh out of school and eager to learn. Audit provided endless opportunities to learn. If you’re in the profession, you know that audit is vast. As was true for many auditors at the time, SOX compliance work became the focus. After the initial years working on SOX, I shifted to operational auditing and then IT auditing. Auditing provided me with the opportunity develop as a professional through building rapport, leadership, and a combination of soft and hard skills.

Continuous Learner

I come from a family of educators, so learning is in our DNA. It wasn’t always that way. My grandmother Manuela “Maymie” Ontiveros went back to school at age 57, to pursue her Teaching certificate. “After getting her teacher’s certificate, she taught kindergarten, first, second and fourth through eighth grades for 11 years until retiring in 1986. She started as a teacher’s aide, attending through a grant Delta University and Saginaw Valley State University, where she earned her teaching certificate.”3 My grandmother was my first hero. Nothing stopped her.

My grandmother instilled in me the importance of education and continuous learning. She didn’t try to change my mind when I told her that I would major in “business”. She imparted me with a lesson that stays with me to this day.

“Learn how your company makes profit, and do good work to enable that.” – Maymie Ontiveros

That was a lot for a high schooler to take in and try to make sense of. With all of the sage advice, I had to navigate the corporate setting on my own. No one in my family had ever had a ‘corporate job’ before. I did okay working in an office environment as an analyst. Making the jump to internal auditor was huge, as it demanded so many other skills. Looking back, I acknowledge feeling imposter syndrome during the first half of my audit career. I’ve always been the ‘non-traditional’ auditor on the team. The one person on the team without a public accounting background. I also didn’t graduate from large or widely known universities. Continuous learning would open the doors to career growth.

As a new audit professional, I initially sought to gain credibility through certification. I sought to benchmark with my colleagues. Pursuing the certified public accounting (CPA) license was not an option, as it would require too much additional schooling. The certified internal auditor (CIA) certification was both more applicable for my new role, and attainable. It wouldn’t require going back to college. So I pursued and obtained several audit and business process certifications to support my professional practice.

The certifications allowed me to grow within the audit profession. I learned to pivot effortlessly between operational and IT auditing, typically performing my own ‘integrated’ audits. Scoping both business and IT risks as a solo auditor became my hallmark. I continued this approach after first becoming Audit Manager, and later Business Assurance (Internal Controls) Manager.

My personal philosophy to become a better auditor, was to learn the professions of the stakeholders I was auditing, i.e. to learn their common body of knowledge and best practices. I gained two master’s degrees in business and software design and programming along the way.

Terms like “growth mindset” and “learning culture” did not exist when I started my journey. My thirst for knowledge was partially driven by my desire to be the best internal consultant I could be. Thanks grandma! Pursuing certifications and advanced degrees helped me learn to strive for best practices in business and technical process alike. I like to think that my employers and stakeholders were better for it.

Accolades get you only so far. Working on dynamic and collaborative teams also fosters growth. I learned so much from the great leaders and colleagues I’ve had through the years. I still frequently reflect on many of the career forming conversations I’ve had with mentors and thought leaders through my career. This is a public and collective, thank you. I wouldn’t be where I am without the comradery and mentorship along the way.

Experimenter

I’ve always been a fan of Kung-Fu movies in general, and Bruce Lee specifically. Say what you will about the movie genre, Bruce Lee is the source of many great quotes to live by. Look them up if you aren’t already familiar. This is my absolute favorite.

“Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”

— Bruce Lee

This is my approach to learning and continuing professional education (CPE). I am always on the look out for new concepts with the intent of finding a way to apply the learning. I’m not interested in learning to be the smartest in the room. This ego driven approach to learning can actually hurt your professional relationships and limit your success in an audit role. Applying knowledge and adapting your practice is “the way”. Yes! I’ve applied Bruce’s principles to my audit career. Continuous learning and experimentation without the pageantry. Use what works!

Amazon has a slightly different take on this principle.

Invent and Simplify

Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here.” As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.

— Amazon

This remains one of my favorite Amazon leadership principles, and I continue to live it years after working there. Times have changed and so have I. I no longer suffer from imposter syndrome. Having a background in operational, financial, compliance, and technology audit allows me to see risk wholistically. Beyond audit, I am a Lean practitioner, coder (Python), and data analytics engineer.

I didn’t know this when starting my audit career, but the audit profession is largely a self-trained industry in my experience, with notable training provided by the “Big” accounting firms and Protiviti. What I mean by this is the best continuous professional education (CPE) training continues to come from within our profession’s membership. In this way, we are self-taught as an industry. I have thoughts.

I’m an advocate of how our industry maintains our common body of knowledge and self certifies. However, there are risks related to single sourcing your training in this way. “Free” CPE provided by the large Accounting firms may not really have your professional development in mind. Billable consulting hours are still the primary revenue driver for these firms. I don’t mean to create a flame war here, but am merely calling out single sourcing “free” CPE as a risk to your professional growth.

It’s not lost on me that the internal audit profession is at a crossroads for relevancy. Could it be that we are guilty of consuming too many “free” CPE credits without building our skill sets? Will this generation of internal auditors be as relevant as the last? It’s this backdrop that I introduce this site and purpose.

Enter Audit Ri.sk

I’m starting this new blog and media company catering to the internal audit community. I’ve always shared my audit knowledge and experiences freely with my colleagues. I contributed during team “lunch and learns” and IIA chapter presentations. Obviously, the tools of the internet make it easy to share globally. I have experience here too. I started three online businesses over the past decade that support the CPE economy. I’m happy to say that all three are healthy and operating today. I’ll share more about them soon. This post is about the launch of my fourth and most personal launch. I’ve been the “tech” guy behind the scenes for the previous launches. This launch is about sharing what makes me unique. My family, mentors, and personal experience got me here. I will share passionately and earnestly. Hopefully something is useful to you.

Please find me on LinkedIn 4, but I’m hoping you’ll connect with me here as well.

Sources:

1 Wikipedia contributors. (2023, June 29). WorldCom scandal. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 03:44, July 15, 2023, from Wikipedia
2 Wikipedia contributors. (2023, June 29). Cynthia Cooper (accountant). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 08:26, February 3, 2024, from Wikipedia
3 Raul Garcia. (2002, October 19). Manuela Maymie Garcia Ontiveros. Retrieved 8:41, February 3, 2024 from University of Texas Austin
4 Jamie Ontiveros on LinkedIn