Richard Chambers interviewed 15 audit committee chairs to identify gaps in internal audit performance. He found a number of issues including a lack of effective presentation skills. No-one wants to listen to a presenter reading from their slides.
What frustrates me is that so many people sit through bad presentations and don’t think, I must learn how to do better. Presentation skills make a massive difference to your job effectiveness but they are seen as peripheral in job interviews and whether you are good or bad doesn’t make much difference to your career.
I suspect that most auditors, and most audit committee members, have never seen someone deliver a truly good presentation and because they don’t know what good looks like they don’t realise how bad they are. They are unconsciously incompetent.
