Question of the day. Which would you have more confidence in? An internal audit or an independent audit?

            Many of our readers belong to one or more non-profit organizations. Various cattle associations, as well as our different breed associations are non-profit organizations. Currently, I serve on the board of the American-International Charolais Association, headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. Each year, this association submits to an independent audit conducted by an independent accounting firm. Many, if not all breed associations, do exactly the same.

            Why? As you know, these associations all have a board of directors that are elected from their membership, and in most cases, represent a certain area or region of the country. And each board will elect from their number a president, vice president, secretary and treasurer. Now, depending on the size of your organization, the board may choose to hire a staff and it would usually begin with an executive vice president (EVP). In most cases, the EVP would then hire additional personnel as needed, such as recording secretaries, field staff, etc.

            One important distinction is this. The board is responsible for the hiring and firing of the EVP. The EVP is responsible for the hiring and firing of his or her staff.

            But in all cases, an independent annual audit of your association gives the elected board and its membership another pair of eyes on the books! Audits can find incidents of fraud and theft. 

            Don’t get me wrong. Internal audits are important too. But personally, I would not be comfortable with an EVP or an organization that did not want to submit to an independent audit.

            Any more than I am comfortable with a federal government who is not comfortable with an independent audit. If we allow every federal agency to only police themselves and not subject them to outside audits, we are asking for more of the same. By the way, it is the job of the auditor to point out instances of fraud, waste and abuse. It is the responsibility, of our elected president, congress and members of the senate, to act upon what has been found.

            Agency heads can be fired under the authority of the president. President Clinton and others before him trimmed the size of our government and laid off thousands of federal employees.

            Millions of small business owners across America have done “more with less” for decades—just as our non-profit associations have been forced to do. With advances in technology, each employee does more than ever before.

            I personally find it refreshing that we have a president who understands what we go through as taxpayers and chooses to hold our government to higher standards.

            Every branch and every agency of our Federal Government should be subjected to an independent audit. And we owe it to ourselves to make sure this gets done!