Seven seasoned directors and business leaders from Germany, the U.S., Mexico, Japan, Belgium and the U.K share their thoughts and views on board composition.

For many boards and audit committees today, helping to ensure that the company is headed in the right direction and taking appropriate risks – that the company “knows what it’s doing” – is requiring deeper engagement as the business and risk environment becomes more complex and faster paced. In this edition of Global Boardroom Insights, seasoned directors and risk professionals from around the world share their thoughts on how boards are strengthening their oversight of risk – particularly in the context of strategy. Risk and strategy, they agreed, are two sides of the same coin.

We explore the current state of the audit – where audit quality stands today, drivers and indicators of audit quality, and various stakeholders’ expectations of auditors – and what the near-and-long term may hold for auditing. Is audit quality continually improving? What are the key drivers and indicators? Should the auditor’s report be expanded beyond the “pass/fail” audit opinion? What innovations can companies expect to see in auditing in the next 3-5 years?

Six interviews from around the world shed light on how audit committee agendas are evolving, and the steps seasoned audit committee chairs are taking to help the committee focus its time and energy on the issues that matter most. Starting with ‘learn to say no’, several key insights from the audit committee chairs of Apple, Carlsberg and Imperial Tobacco inter alia are included in the publication.

We discuss audit committee effectiveness and have found that it hinges on getting the right membership; active involvement; effective communication; getting the right information; and tone at the top.

We discuss the cyber challenge with audit committee chairs from around the globe – cyber attacks are no longer a matter of if, but when.

We explore the practical aspects of assessing audit quality and the concerns of investors, together with the relationship between the assessment of audit quality and any decision to tender the audit.

We bring together the views of audit committee chairs from global organizations on key challenges and priorities shaping audit committee and board agendas.