Internal auditors should be strategic partners not ‘business police’ – Telecel CEO

By Kingsley Webora TANKEH

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Telecel Ghana, Patricia Obo-Nai has urged internal auditors to evolve from their traditional role as fault-finding “business police” to become strategic, forward-looking business enablers.

This comes at a time when businesses are more prone to cyber risks than ever before, compounded by a wave of reforms. This, according to Ms. Obo-Nai, calls for robust corporate governance not just for compliance, but to serve as a foundation for business survival and growth.

Speaking at the 2025 Board/CEO/CAE Governance Forum in Accra, Ms. Obo-Nai  argued that embedding internal auditors at the strategy table from the outset was non-negotiable, stressing that they should not be an afterthought.

“When you engage your internal auditors at the start of strategy, they own the strategy with you,” she said.

Themed ‘Governance Amid Transition’,  the 2025 Board/CEO/CAE Governance Forum was organised by the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) Ghana to discuss the significance of robust corporate governance at the time of transition and the role of internal auditors.

Ms. Obo-Nai, challenging the conventional role of internal auditors, said: “You are not supposed to be business police. You’re supposed to be facilitators, you’re supposed to be business enablers, you’re supposed to be strategic partners, especially to the CEO”.

Crediting her internal audit team as a critical driver of the success in her company’s transition from Vodafone to Telecel Ghana, Ms. Obo-Nai advised internal auditors to make themselves strategic partners and not only fault finders.

“My advice to internal auditors is to find their place at the table, make themselves strategic partners to the business leaders and contribute, not be fault finders after the issue has happened. At that time, I don’t think there’s much relevance to what you’re doing,” she intimated.

She further noted that the modern auditor is tasked not just with identifying what went wrong, but preventing risks from materialising in the first place – given the elevated risk environment they now operate in.

Citing the IIA’s recently released 2026 Risk in Focus Report, the President of IIA Ghana, Ebenezer Kwadwo Omari-Mireku, highlighted that cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and “governance and corporate reporting” are among the top ten threats to businesses.

“In Ghana, we are going through a lot of reforms and transitions, both at the corporate level of organisations and as well as the nation,” Mr. Omari-Mireku noted.

Acknowledging these risks and the disruptive force of Artificial Intelligence, Mr. Omari-Mireku argued that proactive governance can stem these vulnerabilities. He, however, noted the old retrospective model is not well equipped to handle the velocity and complexity of these modern challenges.

Ms. Obo-Nai, who transitioned from Engineering to become a CEO, emphasised that strong controls underpin sustainable success.

“If your control environment is weak, you will have surprises. Despite your commercial successes, you will have surprises that can erode all the successes that you have chalked as a leader,” she warned.

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